


Hear Your Heart

by purpledaisy



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, M/M, Mild Blood, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-19 15:07:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 78,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4750808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purpledaisy/pseuds/purpledaisy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“That collective groan leads me to some more rules: do not cry, do not complain, and do not be embarrassing. This isn’t an easy job by any means but you all chose it. If you didn’t, get out now.”<br/>-<br/>Written for the prompt: Harry and Zayn are first year surgical interns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [withloveandsqualor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/withloveandsqualor/gifts).



> I loved all of your prompts and I've always wanted to try a hospital fic--so here it is! Hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> A/N: This story does take place in a hospital and though I have worked to smooth over gross and gory details there is still a little bit of blood, as well as emotional surgeries/procedures and mentions of surgical deaths. I don't claim to be a doctor so don't squint too hard at the medical procedural details--though Google and med school friends have been quite helpful the last couple of months. It also features questionable employee conduct (not with patients, just with each other) and a lot of Lilo friendship. 
> 
> Title: "Hear Your Heart" - James Bay
> 
> [(X)](http://daisyharry.tumblr.com/post/134610634541/title-hear-your-heart-purpledaisy-words-78224)

It’s sticky hot in the front of Niall’s battered old Jeep as Harry curls his fingers around the handles of his bag the sun pressing down through the open top. He closes his eyes under his sunglasses and tilts his head back, let’s the wind off the I-10 ride around him in waves as Niall yells to someone weaving in and out of traffic next to them. Niall laughs loud as he accelerates, the Jeep lurching around who ever it is that he just spent three minutes verbally berating through the window. A smile tugs at Harry’s lips; maybe more than anything else, his best friend will be what he misses most.

Niall swerves into the departure terminal on two wheels coming to a stop up against the curb. They both get out, swinging their bodies over the high edges of the Jeep and thudding onto the pavement. Harry pulls his other bag out of the backseat and tosses them both on the ground. He hitches his sunglasses up on top of his head, pushing his hair back. Niall knocks the wind out of him when he grabs him around the waist. He jostles Harry back and forth followed by a squeeze so hard Harry starts coughing which only makes Niall laugh, a big brash sound that Harry’s known since he was a kid.

“You’re going to be great, H,” he says when he lets go, tugging on Harry’s hair. Harry’s got it the longest he’s had it since he graduated college four years ago, resting against the tops of his shoulders. “Oh, wait, is it Dr. Harold E. Styles now?”

“Fuck off, Ni.” Harry can’t keep the smile out of his voice as he shakes his head. “And it’s Dr. Harry E. Styles, you know that. Harold’s not even my name.”

Niall drops his head back as he cackles before slapping a wet kiss against Harry’s cheek. Harry gags and wipes it off with the back of his hand.

The smell of sunscreen lingers in the air swirling around the natural smell of California sun. Harry swears it has it’s own distinct smell but it might just be one of home. He drapes one of his bags across his body, grips the other in his hand.

Niall asks him the same questions his mom would: if he has his social security card, his ID (in his wallet), and his inhaler (in his carry on bag). Then he raises his voice, intentionally, to ask him if he has his dildo and extra small condoms. Harry knees him in the balls for the last comment, his cheeks turning pink as a few people turn to stare. Niall hugs him once more before pushing him towards the doors of the airport. He climbs back in the Jeep as Harry walks away yelling profanities along with simultaneous well wishes while Harry shakes his head and apologizes to a few stray passengers walking past.

At security he smiles at the woman who checks his ID. “Boarding pass?” She gives him a bored look while he fumbles it out of his back pocket.

“Oops, sorry, here.” He slides it across to her with another smile she doesn’t return. She scans it and hands it back to him ushering him through security with a nod of her head already looking past him towards the next person.

*

Harry shifts against the wall while pulling at his dark blue scrubs and glancing around at the other interns. The rest of the hospital moves seamlessly around them; repetitive beeping of machines, shoes squeaking against the linoleum floors, soft murmurs, and the low click of keyboards from the main desk. Harry’s used to the layout of Portland General after their week of orientation but he still feels nerves bubbling in his stomach as his eyes dart around the space.

The last guy from their residency class of twelve runs out of the locker room, pushing his dark hair back with a headband. He glances over towards Harry as he passes. Harry smiles slowly only to have the guy drop his gaze almost immediately and tag himself on at the end of the line, far away from Harry and his smile. He schools his face back to neutral and bites the inside of his cheek, so much for making friends.

“Interns.” They all turn their heads in unison as a woman with olive skin and a sleek black bun walks up to them from just down the hallway. “I’m Dr. Charles, I’m your attending for your first year.”

She stops in front of them, her voice just as commanding as her broad frame. This is the attending surgeon the other older residents talked about in orientation, Harry’s sure. The one who can make interns shit their pants all while standing at five foot nothing.

“I’ll assume you all look lost because you’re waiting for me and not because that’s the permanent look on your faces.” One girl further down the line starts to laugh only to be promptly cut off with a strong side-eye from Dr. Charles. “When I walk you walk, that’s rule number one.” She turns around and walks away from them without so much as a backwards glance.

Harry runs his hands over the front of his scrubs again as they cross to the main desk on the floor, herding behind Dr. Charles like ducklings. She grabs for something on the desk before turning towards them. “This is a pager,” she says holding it up. “Don’t make some smartass comment about this being the nineties, it wasn’t funny with the intern class last year and it’s not funny now. Eighty-five percent of hospitals use pagers, we are one of them.”

She hands the one in her hand to the guy closest to her, the one who came out of the locker room late. He’s got his hair pushed back fully now and a sparkly stud in his nose on his side closest to Harry. Harry’s eyes go unintentionally wide when he attaches the pager to the waistband of his scrubs, flashing an inked heart over his thin hips in the fraction of a second before he pulls his top back down.

Dr. Charles leans over the counter for the rest of the pagers before handing each of them one. “When this goes off I do not care what you’re doing, you run to answer it. There’s no brisk walking here, no jogging, no casual strolling. This is why you have those fancy new Nike shoes on your feet, so you can run your little butts off to answer pages. People live and die by how fast you get to them. Are we clear?”

There’s a murmured agreement from the group but Dr. Charles has already moved on, handing them each a clipboard. “I trust you know what this is. Take good notes and you better write clearly in patient files or I will personally send you to the preschool writing room to learn how.”

The first page is blank so Harry writes the date at the top; June twenty-first--that seems like the right thing to do--then tucks his pen in his jacket pocket.

Dr. Charles crosses her arms in front of her body as she stares them down individually before speaking to the group again. “Next, you’ll end up covered in blood, vomit or something unidentifiable each and every shift in this place.”

If this is supposed to scare them, it doesn’t. The guy next to Harry, with light brown hair styled in some sort of quiff in the front, just smirks. Harry would swim through an ocean of any of those substances if it meant he came out on the other side as a surgeon and he’s sure he’s not the only one.

“Speaking of shifts, yours will be long and you’ll alternate those long shifts with overnight shifts in the emergency room. You are interns, bottom of the totem pole. You wont see the inside of an operating room except from the gallery for the first month, you will be excellent secretaries, and you will absorb everything you see and hear.”

Harry keeps his face even; he already read they wouldn’t get to be in an actual operating room until their first month probationary period is over. By the sounds of it, a few other interns didn’t get that far in the orientation packet.

“That collective groan leads me to some more rules: do not cry, do not complain and do not be embarrassing. This isn’t an easy job by any means but you all chose it. If you didn’t, get out now.” It sounds like a joke but the strong set of her jaw tells them it’s anything but.

She calls out their names individually for their assignments after that, two interns to each specialty in the hospital. They’ll rotate on specialties with the same intern partner with two weeks on each specialty before switching; Harry read that in the packet too.

“It goes without saying, I don’t expect you to be best friends with your intern partner but all of you are from different places and have different experiences. Use that to your advantage, learn from each other.” She smirks to herself before adding, “Or, don’t take my advice at all, see if I care,” as an afterthought.

Harry crosses his fingers behind his back hoping for a good partner.

“Styles,” Dr. Charles says his name without looking up from her stack of papers, “and Malik. You’re on cardio first.”

She holds out a notecard and Harry reaches for it at the same time the guy with the headband and nose stud does—Malik, evidently. Harry drops his hand as the other guy’s fingers grasp the paper and pull it back. He has ink all along the back of his hand and up his wrist, the rest hidden under the sleeve of his white coat. Before Harry can say anything Malik has already turned around, walking towards the cardio wing. Harry watches him go for a second, broad shoulders tapering to thin hips. He pinches the side of his thigh for even noticing, on his first day no less.

“Hey.” Harry jogs up next to him slowing when Malik acknowledges him with a glance. He has dark eyelashes framing lighter brown eyes but there’s no expression on his features.

“S’up,” he says and keeps walking.

“I’m Harry.” He tries again, widening his pace to keep up with him as he turns down the next hallway. Harry’s got a couple of inches on him, all in his legs too, but Malik moves quickly.

“Zayn.” Harry tries not to roll his eyes. Of all people to get paired with he’d get the beautiful one, and, of course, the beautiful one would only be able to say one word at a time. Go figure.

“Nice to meet you, Zayn.” He says it but it’s drowned out by a louder booming voice of, “You people my interns?” from down the hall.

Standing in front of the main desk of the cardiothoracic wing is a woman with curly brown hair and thin lips. She smiles when she sees them, already taking a different approach to teaching than Dr. Charles.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m Zayn Malik.” Zayn steps forward with his hand outstretched to grasp hers as she introduces herself as Dr. Burke.

“Harry Styles,” he says stepping forward to grasp her hand the way his mom taught him as a kid, firmly but not too tight and letting go before it gets overbearing.

“Good to meet you both.” She nods once. “Follow me.”

They walk in silence down the hallway to the doorway of a patient’s room before she turns to both of them. “Each shift, you’ll do rounds on each of my patients with me. Give me a report on their status and history, take notes about our conversations, make changes as I request. Good?” They both nod. “Great, here’s our first one.”

Inside the room is bleak; white walls and square windows. The pop of color only comes from the blue linens on the bed and faded floral paintings on the wall. A woman is sitting up in the bed knitting something in shades of pink. She looks over towards them when they walk in her lips pursed together. Dr. Burke talks to her for a moment and explains how she wants to test her new interns on her favorite patient and it makes the woman in the bed smile.

“Okay, then, who wants to present? Styles?” She looks over at him and he nods, looking down at his clipboard. It feels like one of those dreams where he forgot to wear his pants to school as he stares down at the blank paper on his clipboard only the date scrawled across the top.

“I’ve got it,” Zayn says from beside him before Harry can admit he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to present. Harry looks up, watches as Zayn scoots around him to grab the patient chart off the front of the bed, clipping it on his board. Harry feels blood thrumming in his ears in embarrassment, of course he wouldn’t know what to report if he didn’t grab the patient chart when he walked in. He’s pretty sure that was covered day one of orientation last week.

Zayn reads off the patient’s overnight report, her history and her next surgical steps while Harry tries to will away the pink he’s positive is now tinting his face.

“Ms. Jackson is scheduled for a valve repair tomorrow at noon.” Zayn flips the chart closed when he finishes.

“Actually, I’m going to want to move that to nine instead of noon.” Dr. Burke looks directly at Harry, “Write that down, please.” He grabs the pen out of his coat pocket making a note of it under the date written on his paper. The first day in scrubs and he’s been demoted from intern to secretary.

Dr. Burke asks Zayn a few questions about valve repairs and he answers each one easily with a sense of confidence Harry can almost feel. It’s intimidating, as he stands there with his pen poised over his paper to take notes, the way Zayn already knows beyond a shadow of a doubt what he’s doing.

“Perfect,” Dr. Burke says with an impressed nod before walking around them and out of the room. Harry waves at the patient as they leave, feeling awkward to just stalk out after they talked about her like she wasn’t even there.

As they curve into the next room, Harry makes sure to grab the patient chart right away, ignoring the way Zayn looks at him when he does.

“Styles, how about you present this one,” Dr. Burke says without looking up from one of the monitors next to the bed.

“Sure.” He opens the chart and takes a deep breath. “This is Danny Rouche, age forty-seven. He presented with an irregular heartbeat a little over a year ago and was diagnosed with premature heart failure. He was placed with a pacemaker at the time and he’s been on the transplant list since then. He’s set for surgery this afternoon as he got a match early this morning. The heart is en route from Seattle now.”

Harry looks up from the page and down at the patient, at Danny, speaking directly to him, “Wow, hey, congratulations on the heart.” He knows all about the waiting game of organ transplants and how lucky it is to find a match at all—he did a whole report on it during his second year at med school.

Dr. Burke is smirking when Harry looks back over at her. “Great. Yes, congratulations on your heart Danny. Styles, why is this patient’s case unique?”

“He is relatively young to need both a pacemaker and a new heart.”

“Foreseeable complications of the procedure?”

“The body can reject the heart or the organ can malfunction before or after being placed in the body among a multitude of other factors.” He swallows after he says it and looks down at Danny again. He’s just listed all the ways this man can die in the next twelve hours to his face.

“Right. Danny, I’ll see you in a bit. Let the nurses know if you need anything.” Dr. Burke smiles at Harry and Zayn, brushing back out of the room. Harry turns to follow when a hand grabs at his wrist.

“Don’t worry about telling me the odds I’m gonna die, kid.” Danny speaks slowly, his voice rough, “All I need is one good chance to survive.”

They do rounds on nine patients before Dr. Burke sends Zayn to do a surgery prep and Harry to do the bookkeeping side of the rounds. He feels like a glorified secretary in a white coat, yet again, as he wanders back towards the main desk. He notices Zayn doesn’t even crack a smile as he heads off with Dr. Burke and he wants to shake him. Harry’s been bustling with energy and excitement about being a surgeon since he could speak but all signs point to Zayn being void of emotion on the inside. A robot, maybe; an unbelievably gorgeous robot.

Harry takes a seat behind the desk in one of the fancy chairs with wheels. He only half wonders at what age things like chairs with wheels will cease to excite him. He enters his notes into the system and adjusts Dr. Burke’s schedule accordingly. He’s focusing so intently on one of the spreadsheets he barely feels the vibration of his pager against his hip.

It makes him jump when a high-pitched beeping follows the unanswered vibrations and he bounds out of his chair; halfway down the hallway by the time he actually sees the red light flashing on top of his pager. He pulls it off his waistband to check the room number, sprinting around the corner to see a crash cart being rushed down just ahead of him. The nurses pushing the cart turn into the room he was in just this morning, Danny’s room.

Inside, nurses are yelling and there’s an insistent beeping flooding out of the monitors the patient is connected too. Danny’s head hangs limp and to the left, his hands shaking at his sides.

“Unconscious. He’s coding.” A nurse in burgundy scrubs is up next to the bed, reclining it and pulling open his gown

A doctor Harry hasn’t met rushes in, his jacket flying out behind him. He grabs for the paddles as he yells out instructions and numbers to one of the nurses. Harry grabs for the chart looking up against the screen and comparing stats. Everything is happening so fast; he barely registers his own decisions acting on the instincts of clinical training from his last year of school. He looks for abnormalities as the nurse pushes open the gown fully; the patient’s head lolled back on his neck now. Harry hears the slick wet of the gel on the paddles before they’re pushed up against his chest.

“Clear,” the doctor yells and they all pause as the shocks course through his body, Danny’s limbs pulling up from the force of it, spine curling irregularly before he falls back on the bed.

Harry checks the screen and shakes his head. “Again.” One of the nurses looks with him to double check and repeats, “Again.” It all happens in the eyelash of a second before the next shock is coursing through the body on the bed.

A moment of pause and then a steady beep and green line shooting up on the screen in front of Harry’s face. “We’re good,” he says making some notes on the file and trying to calm his own heartbeat before he needs a crash cart too.

“Well, Mr. Rouche,” Dr. Burke leans in the doorway now, tapping her fingers against the frame, “Looks like we’re getting you a heart just in time.” The tension in the room has dissipated just the nurses patting at the patient’s sweat slicked face, as he lies flat and still.

“Guess so,” he says, his voice even weaker than an hour before when Harry had first met him. Dr. Burke disappears with a short smile and the room deflates even further; only the soft sounds of the nurses murmuring together. “They said it’s the new interns’ first day.”

Harry starts slightly when he sees Danny is talking to him and he takes a step closer to him, “We had orientation last week but yeah, this is it.”

“And here I almost ruined it for you.” There’s a slight smile playing at his mouth as he licks at his bottom lip.

“Nah, I think you were just testing me,” Harry says with small smile. “Which was nice of you, really.”

“That’s the right attitude, kid.” He laughs and it comes out like a whispered wheeze, “You go get back to saving lives, I’ll still be here when you get back. Gotta get my heart today.”

“You better be,” Harry points to him as he circles the bed and heads towards the door, “I’m going to hold you to that, Danny.”

There’s another wheeze of a laugh and Harry hears him tell the nurses, “That’s the nicest intern they’ve sent in here since I’ve been in this damn bed.”

Harry counts it as a win.

Then, a win again when he sees Zayn outside of the door, holding his pager in his hand studying the screen with his eyebrows pulled together.

“Already took care of it,” Harry says walking past, trying not to look too smug and, probably, failing.

Eight hours into their first shift Harry and Zayn make their way to the cafeteria for dinner in utter silence. Harry tried to start a conversation when they first started the walk but Zayn whipped his head in the opposite direction so Harry clamped his mouth shut. He’s rather talented at realizing when he’s unwanted; he’s just never been good at accepting it.

The cafeteria is fairly empty save for the table in the corner with the entire class of first year residents. There are a few on their phones but most of them are eating and staring straight ahead, silent for the most part. Dr. Charles told them they’d have the same schedule for the first few days but after that they would rarely be in the hospital at the exact same times with anyone besides their intern partners because of scheduling and specialties. It’s fine with Harry considering he doesn’t know any of them besides Zayn, though he already wants to return him for a new partner.

They both get their food in lingering silence while Harry looks around the room; vaulted ceilings with skylights and wall length windows backing up to the heart of the city. Back at the table, Harry takes an open seat near three empty chairs but Zayn goes to the opposite end of the table and pulls up an extra chair. Zayn avoiding him like the plague after eight hours together does nothing for his ego.

“I’m going to cry,” a guy announces next to Harry, setting his tray down and sitting in the chair next to him, the one Zayn couldn’t seem to bring himself to want. “No, I’m going to eat this and then cry and then puke.”

“That bad?” Harry opens the top of his salad picking off the croutons and sunflower seeds and putting them in the plastic lid.

“Terrible. Fucking awful,” he says shaking his head. It’s the same guy from this morning, he realizes; the one who smirked about blood, vomit and unidentifiable substances. “Like, huge pus filled blisters bursting is currently at the top of the list of things I never want to see again.” Harry chokes over a bite of his salad, the girl across the table turns her body opposite from them. “TMI?” He takes a bite of his sandwich, his cheeks bulging.

“Maybe for dinner,” Harry says over another bite. They are supposed to be surgeons after all, things aren’t supposed to gross them out.

He shrugs as he chews, “My bad. I’m Liam by the way.”

“Harry.”

“What specialty are you on first?”

“Cardio.” He twists off the cap of his water bottle before taking a long sip.

“Sick, dude.” He wipes his hand over his mouth, “I can’t wait until we do actual surgeries. Who’s your partner?”

“Uh, Zayn.” Harry tilts his head down the table, “He’s got the headband, dark hair,” _no ass, tattoos, melty brown eyes, “_ at the end over there.”

Liam leans forward to look down the table as another guy plops his tray down across from them with an exaggerated sigh.

“He is such a good looking man,” the new guy says on an exhale like it’s a secret. Harry looks up and sees his eyes are trained on Zayn just like Liam’s. He has messy brown hair with light blue eyes. “Like a model in scrubs or something.”

“This is Louis,” Liam tilts his head to the side towards the guy with the blue eyes. “He’s my intern partner.”

“We’re the dream team, if Liam’s being honest.” He grins and takes a bite of his sandwich. He asks Harry for his name with his mouth full and Harry likes his unapologetic nature already.

“Why are you not eating those?” Louis points at Harry’s discarded pile of sunflower seeds and croutons after he swallows.

“I got really nervous and ate like three of those hash browns from McDonalds to try to calm down. Trying to undo the damage now.” Harry barely gets the words out before Louis is plucking them up off of the lid and into his mouth.

“That sounds very responsible of you,” he says. “But I’ve heard of no such thing as being responsible so I’m going to eat them for you.”

“By all means.” Harry licks his tongue over his fork and shoves his napkin in the empty salad container; he hadn’t even realized how fast he was eating.

Louis tells his own version of the pus filled blisters from the emergency room and he makes it sound like an action movie instead of something that would make most people gag. Zayn doesn’t look up from his book once and Harry tries not to be bothered.

When Louis and Liam leave the table they make Harry wish for no more pus filled anything for the last few hours of their shift. Harry does so willingly, laughing when Louis tugs his ear in thanks and rushes out of the cafeteria after Liam. Harry finishes his water and takes his garbage to the trash before going to find Zayn.

When he turns back, though, the table is empty and Zayn is nowhere to be found. He avoids stomping his foot because he knows he doesn’t need everyone to like him but this blind hate thing, he’s not sure he can take it. He pulls his hair up into a messy bun and stalks out of cafeteria, willing himself to get through the next four hours without combusting.

-

Harry makes it through rather successfully and without combusting at all.

He does two post-op reports, including one with Danny the heart transplant patient who, though groggy and bed bound for a few days, has a new working heart. He organizes a few supply bins, checks in on patients with a couple of the nurses, runs some labs, and stays far away from Zayn. Or Zayn stays away from him; the way they dance around each other, it’s hard to be sure.

He finds Zayn in the locker room after, Zayn pulling on a pair of black combat boots when Harry comes in. They make eye contact and Zayn’s the first to break it, Harry just barely avoiding rolling his eyes.

“Not too bad for a first day,” Harry says twisting the dial on the lock attached to his locker.

“Hm?” Harry glances over his shoulder to see Zayn looking up at him from the bench.

“Oh, I just said not too bad for a first day.” He feels like a fool repeating it considering the locker room is pretty much silent and he’s more than sure Zayn heard him the first time.

“Yeah not bad at all,” Zayn nods and, Harry realizes with a shock of something like relief, puts the white earbud in his hand back in his ear. He stands up and hitches his bag up on his shoulder. He gives Harry a wave and a small smile as he passes--Harry returns it with an overenthusiastic grin.

He catches the bus at the front of the hospital after he changes into sweats and a black hoodie. His apartment is close enough to walk which he promises himself he’ll do when his bones don’t ache and his feet don’t feel like they have weights attached to them.

It’s already dark as the bus pulls through the city and Harry leans his forehead against the window. The streets are brightly lit, a testament to the safety rating of Portland that his mom looked up when he made his decision to move up here. He has so many things he wants to see but he can’t imagine doing anything but crawling into his bed right now, let alone exploring an entire city.

He only has to walk a block from the bus stop to his apartment complex, a brick building with a big light out front illuminating the walkway. He stands back to take a picture of it, and he sends it to his mom with a series of emojis underneath. He hasn’t lived at home in almost eight years but his mom worries constantly about him and his older sister. He takes the stairs slowly to the second floor, kicking the bottom corner of his door to get it open after he twists the lock.

He shuts the door behind himself, setting the double locks and putting his bag on the counter. He flicks on the one switch that lights up the kitchen and the main room--the only room. He has a beanbag in one corner, two bar stools at the counter, and a twin mattress with a deep green duvet near the wall under the window. It’s not a lot but it was cheaper than driving up his stuff from home and cheap is something he values at this point in his career.

He plugs his phone into the wall while he showers, rubbing at his body and scrubbing at his hair until he can’t feel the grime of the day leaving his skin warm and pink. He brushes his teeth in the shower to save water before he shuts it off, pulling on a new pair of sweats and an old Rolling Stones t-shirt. His phone starts ringing as he’s hanging his towel over the one hook in the bathroom and he runs to answer it, crossing the entire apartment in only a handful of steps.

A grin breaks across his face when he sees Niall’s caller ID on the screen, a picture Harry took during undergrad of him passed out in a bush. He slides his finger across the screen to answer.

“Doctor Styles,” comes blaring out of the speaker as Niall’s face in real time pops up, his face older than his caller ID picture, hair darker.

“Hi,” he draws out the word sitting up on one of the bar stools.

“Bro. Did you get robbed?” Niall has a look of terribly fake innocence in his smile, eyes wide as he looks at the empty room behind Harry. Harry blinks at the screen as Niall starts laughing with his head thrown back, “I’m kidding, kidding, kidding.” He’s shoveling something fluorescent orange in his mouth and speaking with the fork still between his lips.

“Is that what I think it is?” Harry squints at the screen.

“I teach children for a living, I’m allowed to eat kid food,” Niall yells, his mouth packed full of Kraft macaroni cheese. Probably the alien shaped noodles too just like they used to eat during college when they ran out of money for actual groceries. “Shut up and give me the grand tour, come on.”

Harry’s been in the apartment for a week already but he hasn’t had the chance to show anyone. Partly because he was busy buying his twin mattress and beanbag but mostly attending orientation at the hospital. “Are you ready?” Harry stands up, “It’s going to last all of three seconds so don’t blink.”

“Stop talking about sex, Harold,” Niall deadpans and Harry rolls his eyes again.

It takes him a little longer than three seconds to make it all the way around the apartment with sarcastic commentary from Niall and his own self-deprecating comments.

“I made a list,” Harry says settling down in the beanbag rather than the stool in the kitchen, “of things I still have to buy when I get my first paycheck.” Med school loans have already put him in debt up to his eyeballs so he’s been careful about buying too much in one go before he actually starts getting paid by the hospital.

Niall nods and sets his bowl down before rearranging on his couch. “What’s it going to be then, H? Area rug? Forks? Handcuffs?”

“Hangers, for one.” Harry turns the screen to do quick shot over towards the pile of boxes in front of his closet, a few sheer shirts and black jeans scattered around from his attempt at finding his jeans this morning. “And I need a clothes hamper too.”

“Very practical,” Niall nods approvingly. “Meanwhile, I have hangers and a clothes hamper but a migraine from screaming eight-year-olds, so.”

“Because no one likes summer school, Ni. I can’t believe they talked you into it this year.” Harry adjusts the phone a bit as Niall rambles on about all of the reasons he should have supplemented his teaching income with coaching during the summer instead of teaching summer classes. Then, he listens to Harry talk about the hospital keeping his side comments to himself as he usually does when Harry starts talking about something he really cares about.

“It sounds kind of boring, huh?” Harry suddenly becomes conscious of his mundane stories about writing the scheduled surgeries on the whiteboard.

“Saving lives, who needs it?” Niall scoffs. “You’re right in the thick of it, dude. Like, all around you lives are being saved and made better and one day you’ll be the one doing it.” He shakes his head, his voice dropping into the kind of genuine awe only Niall gets when talking about his friends.

They catch up on a few more things, like Niall’s failed date with a first grade teacher from another school before they end the call particularly quickly after Harry drops his chin on his chest and “rests his eyes” which Niall yells at him for.

After he hangs up, he opens the window over his bed now that the summer air has slightly cooled off outside. He adds “fan” to the list he has hung up on a magnet on his refrigerator, right under hangers, lamp and the laundry hamper he has scrawled out already. He turns out the main light and navigates back to his bed in the dark, crawling under the duvet and kicking his legs around to get comfortable. He checks his phone one more time, smiling at the emojis his mom sent him back about being safe before he clicks it off and sets it off the edge of his bed.

He pulls the covers up to his chin and the minute his eyes close and his breathing starts to relax, he’s passed out completely, the distant city sounds outside his window lulling him further into sleep.

*

Harry familiarizes himself with being on Dr. Burke’s service and doing things the way that she likes the first few shifts. Still, it’s difficult to fall into a routine with inconsistent schedules and no expectations for what each shift will bring.

 Harry and Zayn are mostly assigned secretarial work or menial tasks—getting coffee for the older surgeons, taking tests down to the labs, organizing supplies, and running errands.

Their second morning in cardio, they both have patient urine samples to be tested in the lab. Zayn at least sits next to Harry in the waiting area but takes to reading a medical journal right away. Harry’s spent his fair share of time reading medical journals and he’s not sure how this one could be more interesting than a conversation. After nearly twenty minutes of complete silence, Harry can’t take it anymore, a sudden, urgent need to fill the space between them.

“I heard it rains a lot in Portland,” he says first. Zayn glances over at him with a quick nod before focusing back on the magazine. “I’ll have to buy a rain jacket, probably.” Harry wants to push the words back in his lips as soon as they’re out, his cheeks turning pink. It’s like his mouth is orchestrating a train wreck he can’t stop. That, or he’s realizing his unknown dream of being a weatherman. “Did you know it rains almost forty-inches a year here?”

“Malik, I have your results,” the woman at the window says then, pushing a piece of paper through the small window.

Zayn raises one dark eyebrow at Harry when he stands before walking away. After he gets his results he glances down where Harry’s sitting with a smirk but Harry can’t decide if there’s mirth in it or just pity.

They divide the rest of their time prepping patients for surgery or going over treatment plans before they are discharged. One particular patient, Lula-Belle, has white bouffant hair and a penchant for Harry’s tattoos. She interrupts him three times one afternoon to ask questions about his ink, the third time being a very direct question about why he has a “naked lady” on his arm. He can’t quite articulate a reason for the mermaid fast enough for Lula-Belle so she tells him she can give him a reason if he would just let her. A nurse snorts because she is laughing so hard at their exchange and Harry tries to politely decline Lula-Belle’s offer. He’s not sure it works when he finds her phone number tucked in the pocket of his coat later that night.

Most patients are just happy to be leaving the hospital or too nervous about their impending surgeries to be very talkative. But there are the rare few who take their hospital stay in stride especially the time they spend with the interns.

At the end of their third shift, Dr. Burke gives Harry and Zayn a list of patients who have volunteered to be questioned by them about their health conditions. It turns out not everyone is interested in being part of their medical education while others are more than enthusiastic.

Harry’s patient, Mr. Hyphy, in room 405 takes it upon himself to be a teacher, unqualified as he might be, when Harry walks into his room with his chart that night.

“Don’t look at it,” the man throws his hands out as Harry goes to open the chart.

“Okay.” It comes out slow and unsure as Harry drops the folder down by his hip.

“You’re an intern, right?” He has messy blonde hair and looks older than Harry’s mom but his eyes are bright, framed by black-rimmed glasses. He rolls his neck and flexes his fingers, smiling wide.

“Yeah, didn’t they tell you I was coming in?” Harry gets closer to the bed, taps the folder against his thigh.

“No, yeah, I’ve been waiting.” He clears his throat, “I want to give you a pop quiz. I used to teach high school and I still miss it some days so it would mean so much to me if I could.” He looks wistfully beyond Harry’s shoulder but Harry doesn’t bother telling him it’s the weakest guilt trip he’s ever heard.

“Sure, why not?” Harry glances at his watch. It’s a slow night anyway, the floor all but quiet besides Zayn and Harry moving around and speaking to patients. It’s more like they’re entertainers rather than surgeons as he pulls up a chair and settles back, holding the closed chart in his lap. “What kind of quiz do you have in mind?”

“I’m going to give you my symptoms and then you can tell me why I’m here.” He grins after he says it and Harry holds back a sigh.

“Sounds good. So, what are your symptoms?”

“I have severe pain in my neck, sometimes it goes down to my shoulders and arms. The sides are swollen and tender to the touch.”

Harry purses his lips. “You’re lying.”

“What?” Mr. Hyphy looks mildly offended.

“You’re giving me symptoms of a fractured neck but you’ve moved fine since I walked in. And,” Harry holds up a finger when Mr. Hyphy goes to interrupt, “you rolled your neck about two minutes ago. That would have made you scream in pain. Literally scream. I’ve seen it.”

Mr. Hyphy opens and closes his mouth slowly before smiling slowly. “You’re good,” he points at him, “very, very, good.”

“I try my best,” Harry says with a wry smile, pushing the chair back against the wall and opening the chart. “You’re also in the cardio wing and you would be in the orthopedic wing with those kinds of symptoms.”

“Right,” he sighs the word. “I was just testing you on lying. Patients lie to their doctors all of the time.”

“Yeah,” Harry makes a couple of notes on the chart, resting it on one of the monitors as he writes. “But usually the lying comes in the case of pain killers or hypochondria. Not a procedure to check your pacemaker verses a much higher risk procedure on your neck.”

“Noted. I’ll get the next intern though,” Mr. Hyphy smiles pushing up on the pillows again.

Harry shakes his head but he still smiles, “I bet you will.” He goes on to discuss how the surgery prep will go the next morning and answers a few more questions about the procedure before wishing him a goodnight and going to the next room.

His first spark of common ground with Zayn comes during their fourth shift when they finally get assigned to one of the operating room galleries to observe and take meticulous notes on a heart transplant. It’s not the first procedure Harry’s watched in person but the thrill is stronger knowing how close he is to being on the operating room floor rather than suspended above in a glass box.

There is a moment after the new heart is placed in the patient’s body when it is all hooked up to the rest of the organs and the valves are ready to function, where everyone waits to see if the heart will take or be rejected. That one moment is a collective held breath even up in the gallery. No one moves, as they wait for the first pump the first sign the heart is ready to work in the new body.

Harry swears his own heart almost slows as they watch that day, lips parted, leaning forward in the bright blue chairs. The first pump and spike against the heart rate screen is met with a quick cheer below and a grin spreading slowly across Harry’s lips. He only has to look over at Zayn to know he feels it too. They grin at each other like the baby surgeons they are before they both duck their heads and get back to taking notes. It was there for that moment, though; the recognition of that surgical spark makes them the same.

*

By the end of the first week and a half, Harry doesn’t remember what it feels like for his feet not to ache or to not constantly jump at the mere vibration of his pager. He barely even remembers what his apartment looks like most of the time stumbling home at odd hours to fall face first across his mattress. He’s been meaning to buy a bed frame and a headboard but he can hardly make time to get groceries let alone furniture.

On their last shift in cardio before a two-day break, Harry and Zayn are both sleeping in the on-call room between double shifts when their pagers go off, the beeping even more startling in the quiet room. They jump off the bunks and run for the door so quickly they slam into each other in the middle of the room. Harry starts laughing when they finally make it into the hallway, rubbing their eyes as they run. The look Zayn shoots him over his shoulder tells him a 911 page is not a laughing matter and he swallows his smile quickly.

Every hour he’s in the hospital is spent with Zayn or near Zayn, not that it makes a difference if he’s there. Zayn only really speaks to patients or if an attending surgeon asks him a question. He doesn’t volunteer information easily and Harry can’t ever seem to catch his eye long enough to have an actual conversation. On their breaks and when they fill out paperwork at the end of their shifts, Harry tries to ask him questions and Zayn either answers with one word or looks up at Harry like he’s lost his mind.

The thing that bothers Harry the most is that Zayn is never rude or brash when he answers or speaks, even if it’s just the one-word answers; he just doesn’t seem interested in getting to know Harry or letting Harry get to know him. He thinks it would almost be easier if he were a complete asshole to everyone.

Harry watches as the other interns get closer just by spending so much time together while all he feels is the same dysfunctional tension between him and Zayn. Liam and Louis, in particular, click right away. They have inside jokes and congratulate each other after their end of shift meetings when Dr. Charles quizzes them and Harry sees them fake punch each other more than he thought was possible for two grown men. They seem to genuinely like each other and work as a team; a concept so foreign to his relationship with Zayn he doesn’t like to think about it.

Harry and Zayn take all of their meals together by default but Zayn will usually pull out a book and read it at the end of the table closing off all unwanted contact to Harry. Usually, Harry does okay with it, the reading thing. He talks with the other interns on their shift comparing their grossest patient stories and surgical specialties.

He watches in awe during lunch at the beginning of the second week when Louis sits down next to Zayn and introduces himself easy as anything. Zayn puts his book down and talks to Louis fully while Harry tries not to let his coffee drool out of his mouth. Louis makes it look so easy while Harry’s been bending over backwards to get Zayn to even smile in his direction with no such luck yet.

*

“What do you guys have next?” Liam asks the night before they start their next surgical rotation. Zayn has taken to sitting closer to Harry when Liam and Louis have their same shift, and Harry assumes he has Louis’ introduction a few of days ago to thank.

“Neuro,” Harry says and waggles his eyebrows over another salad, kale this time. “You?”

“Pediatrics,” Liam says plucking a fry from underneath a ketchup and mustard massacre. “I have to give you fair warning about neuro, though. First of all, the head surgeon thinks he’s in Grey’s Anatomy. I swear to you.”

“No way.” Harry laughs thinking about how adamantly everyone in the hospital bashes on medical drama shows compared to their careers.

“Legitimately. He’s also a complete asshole. I’m pretty sure he thinks interns are the scum of the earth,” Louis says from across the table.

“I’ve worked with quite a few jerks,” Zayn says with a shrug. “Should manage just fine.” The words settle as Harry’s jaw drops open and his eyebrows pull together before Zayn is laughing so hard his face starts turning red, shaking his head at the same time. “No, no, not you, I swear,” he says waving his hands around emphatically. Liam and Louis bust up laughing at the look on Harry’s face and he’s slow to join still recovering from the idea of getting publicly slammed by Zayn.

“Fuck, Harry looked like he was about to throw down,” Liam says as Louis tries to imitate Harry’s expression. Harry rolls his eyes and takes another bite of his salad, his lips pulling into a smirk. It might not be the perfect start but at least it’s finally something.

It turns out Zayn’s past experience is nothing to go off of when it comes to Dr. Turner who has coined him self the McDreamy of Portland General, though Harry can’t see a single resemblance. He’s pretty in the overly tanned and toned kind of way but, unfortunately, Louis is right: he hates interns just as much, if not more than they hate being interns.

During rounds, Dr. Turner stares at Zayn and Harry like they’re first year med students trying on white coats instead of on their way to becoming doctors. He yells at Harry for talking too slow during a report on the first day and he tells Zayn he treats patients like slabs of meat on the second day. Harry wants to tell Zayn he thought he did really well with talking to patients but then he’s too focused on trying to spit out his next report as fast as possible and it slips his mind.

Their third shift in neuro comes to an end with both Harry and Zayn sitting on opposite sides of the desk filling out their report forms before they can go home. What had started as sliding the sheets back and forth to initial and get them done quickly turns into aggressive sliding of paper and passive aggressive remarks about not being able to read each other’s handwriting.

“You didn’t sign this,” Harry says shaking a progress report with his hand as he slides it back towards Zayn.

“Yeah I did,” he says without looking at it, pushing it back towards Harry only to have the momentum send it sailing over the edge of the desk and onto the floor.

“Nice, thanks,” he mumbles leaning out of his chair to reach for it. He leans too far and the wheels on the chair slide out from under him leaving him on the floor with the paper blown back another two feet. When he climbs back into the chair, Zayn doesn’t look up but Harry can see him smiling down at the next set of reports. Harry takes a spare pen from between them and chucks it at him, watches it graze his shoulder and bounce off to the floor.

“You better pick that up,” Zayn looks up at him then, his eyes with a certain glitter to the hazel, “Safety hazard. Someone could roll their ankle.”

“You’re an asshole.” Harry points his index finger at him as he stands up, walking around the edge of the desk, a laugh slipping through his bravado.

Zayn just winks at him and looks back down at his reports but Harry knows by the shaking line of his shoulders that he’s laughing too.

-

Their first month surgical probationary period ends during the middle of their stint in neuro and Harry has to look at his phone calendar to double check that much time has even passed. In the whirlwind of orientation and eighty-hour weeks, the time has seemingly slipped by. The end of the first month means they reach a new highlight in their short careers by being allowed on the floor of the operating rooms rather than just watching from the galleries. The rules, as Dr. Charles yelled at them when she told them about the change, are really quite simple. They aren’t allowed to touch or say anything, they shouldn’t move unless there is a fire, and they are to stay out of the way, usually standing by the patient’s feet.

Of course Dr. Turner doesn’t think his interns are ready for such a responsibility and sends Harry and Zayn up to the gallery more often than not, separating them from the action. Harry and Zayn spend the end of the week up in the gallery observing a brain tumor removal on a woman in her seventies. Her case file said she was terminally ill with a low chance of successful retraction and Harry’s stomach rolled with nerves from the second the procedure began. When the tumor removal fails causing the brain to effectively go dead, Harry and Zayn witness their first surgical death since they started at Portland General. It’s something to watch videos, operate on cadavers, and do case studies on surgical deaths. It’s something completely different to take notes in a room made of glass watching it happen, being able to do absolutely nothing.

After the gallery clears, Harry and Zayn both sit with their notebooks grasped in their fingers in complete silence, a sense of shock radiating between them. It’s a different moment than the silence when they were waiting for that heart to beat their first week in the hospital. It hangs over them, a dark cloud of heavy weight, while Harry tries to remember to breathe. Zayn stares at the ground with his eyes closed. Down below, the body is moved and a crew comes in to clean the entire operating room leaving it looking like nothing ever happened.

They only move when they’re paged, the aggressive vibrations making them both jump. They run out of the gallery and down the hall, their white Nikes squelching against the floor.

-

That night they eat dinner together on one of the rare shifts that they’re the only two interns still working. It’s later than usual and the cafeteria is all but empty as Zayn gets his usual sandwich and Harry goes for a spinach salad.

Harry feels jittery with the weight of what they saw in the gallery along with a mess of emotions and circling thoughts that come from purely working in the hospital. He needs to get his mind away from the heaviness of everything they can’t control and the panic that rushes straight through him every time his pager goes off; the fact that people die all around them every day and there’s nothing they can do to stop it.

He needs to talk instead of linger in the silence of the cafeteria.

He sighs loudly and obviously when Zayn pulls out his book even though it’s just the two of them at the table. Zayn raises a daring eyebrow at him before settling it on the edge of the table and reading silently. Harry lasts for as long as it takes him to text Niall and his sister and scroll through his Twitter and Instagram feeds before he definitely needs a distraction.

Before he can truly consider the action his hand is across the table, splaying flat over the page Zayn is reading, covering the words with his spread fingers.

Zayn looks up at him, his eyes seem slightly amused. “Yes?”

“What are you reading?” Harry takes his hand back and picks up his fork, hardly apologetic. “What are you always reading?”

He holds up the front of the book but Harry’s never heard of it, something by Doerr.

“That’s a good one,” he says and he can barely keep his lips from twitching.

“The plot twist in the middle is killing me, though.” Zayn folds the corner page to keep his place, closes the book and sets it on the edge of the table. “The teacher coming out of nowhere like that.” Harry makes a noncommittal noise in his throat and Zayn rolls his eyes. “You’re so full of shit, Harry.”

Harry puts his hand over his chest, “Was I that obvious?”

“Something tells me you’re an awful liar.”

“Yeah, well, it’s rude to read at the table.” Harry twists the straw in his water bottle.

“I wasn’t aware there were rules for dinner on my break during my shift.”

“I mean, you can read if you want to read or we can, you know, talk.”

Zayn stares at him a moment, his bottom lip twitching once, twice before, “All right, what do you want to talk about, then?”

“Like, I don’t know. Life. I’ve known you for almost a month but I barely know you.” He waves his hand when Zayn laughs at his wording, “You know what I mean, Z.” The nickname kind of sneaks out before he realizes it but Zayn smiles so he must not be mortally offended. “So, where are you from?”

“I was born in Connecticut, went to Hopkins for med school, though.”

“John Hopkins?” Harry repeats and tries not to let his eyes pop out of his head. “Damn, that’s impressive.”

“It’s a good program,” Zayn agrees, straightening the napkin holder in the middle of the table.

“Would you like to know where I’m from?” Harry says when the silence lapses on too long. He doesn’t necessarily care if he has to force the conversation, as long as he doesn’t have to think about everything happening outside of the cafeteria.

“Not really.” Zayn shrugs and takes a bite of his sandwich. “I’m kidding,” he laughs when Harry’s mouth actually drops open. “Where are you from?”

Harry narrows his eyes at him before relaxing his features again. “I’m from Palm Springs but I did undergrad and med school at UCLA.”

“Palm Springs?” Zayn purses his lips. “Isn’t that, like, grandpas and golf?”

“Grandpas, golf and palm trees. Don’t forget the palm trees.” Zayn nods and his gaze goes behind Harry, lazily dragging around the room. “You can ask me another question now.” Harry dodges into his line of view, “If you want to keep talking.”

“Maybe I don’t have another question,” Zayn smirks. Harry’s pretty sure he knows exactly what he’s doing and enjoying it fully.

“Fine, I’ll go again. Do you have siblings?”

“I do. Three sisters, one older, two younger. You?”

“Older sister. I’ve always wanted brothers though.”

“Same,” Zayn nods. “Growing up with so many girls was a life altering experience.”

They eat in silence for a moment and Harry starts to assume it’s the end of the conversation again. He can’t help but be disappointed. He’s always been he likable guy, the one everyone can get along with. He can’t even get Zayn to talk to him for more than a couple of minutes even after they spend almost all of their time together.

“Why are you here?”

Harry looks up from studying his salad, pulse thrumming at the accusation in Zayn’s voice. “What?”

“Like, becoming a surgeon. Why?”

Harry’s heart slows as he realizes Zayn is simply asking. “At the risk of sounding like a terrible cliché,” Harry grins, “I want to help people. I want to do things that change lives and make them better. Plus it seemed like a better idea than accountant or firefighter.”

“You could argue firefighters technically make lives better.” Zayn crumples the foil his sandwich came in and leans back in his chair. He tosses it towards the garbage can and pumps his fist when it goes in.

“Yeah but one involves going into burning buildings the other involves a steady hand,” Harry raised his hands up and down like weights on a scale.

“No fire in surgery.” Zayn agrees, “I’ll give you that.”

“What about you? Why do you want to be a surgeon?”

“At the risk of sounding terribly heartless if I don’t say it, I do want to help people.” He tilts his head forward as he says it, like it’s a mandatory statement. “But I also like the idea of fixing things, if that makes sense. Like, if I can figure out how to make a heart work again or give someone the chance to walk again, that’s incredible. It’s like the problem solving part almost? Take broken things and figuring out how to make them work again.”

Harry blinks quickly since he realizes he’s been staring with wide eyes. It’s the most he’s heard Zayn say at once so far and, fittingly, it comes while they are talking about surgery. Harry doesn’t get a chance to react out loud though because their pagers go off at the same moment. Zayn gets up first and he starts grabbing their trash while Harry groans and shoves a huge bite of salad in his mouth. He pulls himself out of his chair, chewing fast and trying not to choke as they run out of the cafeteria.

*

Part of the intern residency program at Portland General is bonding events for the first years, which turns out to be post-it notes with ideas of things to do scrawled haphazardly by Dr. Charles. The first was mini-golf and the second was an icebreaker session both of which Harry gleefully skipped with a nagging suspicion Zayn had too.

On the last day of their neuro rotation Harry sees glow-in-the-dark bowling on a pink post-it note stuck to the calendar when they are leaving the locker room.

“Glow in the dark bowling,” Harry repeats it out loud and Zayn looks over at him, a little weary if anything.

“What?”

“I think it’s the intern bonding thing this week.” Harry pulls at his bottom lip, “I think I’ll go.” Zayn shrugs his shoulders. “You should come too.”  
“I’m not much for bowling, Harry. Glow in the dark or otherwise.”

“But you have to get out of the hospital, right? Your mind is going to go crazy if you just work all the time and don’t do anything else. I feel like that’s all I’ve done so far and my brain is about make me crazy.”

“About to?” Zayn raises his eyebrows and smirks. Getting to know Zayn has involved a lot of quick humor and jabs at Harry. Harry is settling more on Zayn being quietly reserved than openly hateful. He’s mostly just happy when Zayn extends their conversations past three words without the help of Liam or Louis, though.

“At least I’m doing something about it.” Harry points to himself as they turn the corner towards the neuro wing, “You’re going to combust on the inside and go certifiably nuts and no one will ever know.”

Zayn looks at him for a second, like maybe Harry’s touched a nerve he hadn’t known but then his eyes soften just the slightest amount, “Maybe.”

“Maybe you’ll combust or maybe you’ll go?”

“You’ll see.” Zayn waggles his eyebrows and purses his lips. He hands Harry his stethoscope from the wall while he puts his own around his neck and then Dr. Definitely-Not-McDreamy is yelling at them to hurry before Harry can say anything else.

*

It turns out maybe means yes and Zayn shows up at the bowling alley in a deep blue zip-up sweatshirt with his hair pushed back from his face. Harry gives him a small smile from where he’s talking with one of the other interns, a girl named Riley. Zayn nods and gives him a thumbs up as he walks over to where Liam is checking out bowling shoes. The senseless coil of heat in Harry’s chest from the smirk and watching him walk away is something he keeps to himself. 

He’s never questioned how physically attractive Zayn is. It’s been a fact since he walked out of the locker room on the first day; simple like the sky is blue, grass is green, Zayn is gorgeous. When Harry told Niall about him in the second week he said someone would have to be blind to miss the beauty in the way his eyes crinkle when he smiles or the fullness of his lips when he pouts them while he listens to the attending surgeons. He thought Niall might have busted a blood vessel from laughing when Harry rescinded his statement and said that even if he were blind he would just have to touch the edge of Zayn’s razor sharp jawline covered in light stubble to get an instant hard on. He was only slightly exaggerating.

Then there are the moments when Zayn is playful--kind of dorky, in all honesty--where Harry feels a low swoop of something more than just physical attraction. He had played it off as a relief kind of feeling for Zayn warming up to him finally but sometimes Zayn will do something stupid like smirk at him in a bowling alley and it makes him feel a lot different than simply relieved.

In the interest of splitting up intern partners for bowling, Harry and Louis end up on a team opposite Zayn and Liam. It’s not like it matters much besides Harry sneaking glances over at Zayn every once in while. Every once in awhile turns into making fun of him for bowling gutter balls the first half of the game. Then watching like an obsessive hawk while Zayn talks with Liam, the way his face lights up when he laughs and the way he leans into Liam to whisper in his ear. Louis nudges him when he doesn’t remember to stop staring and Harry’s not sure whether to be embarrassed or thankful.

In the end they all end up at a bar across from the bowling alley, laughing and chatting over a few beers. Zayn leaves after just one but he grips Harry’s shoulder as he leaves, a gentle squeeze Harry feels long after he’s disappeared.

*

The week after bowling Harry and Zayn are assigned the pediatric ward with a meaningful look from Dr. Charles when she tells them. “It’s tough up there for doctors but think about how much harder it is to be a kid.”

They take the elevator up to the third floor in silence emerging in a world much brighter than the lower levels of surgical wings. “This is different.” Zayn half smiles as they look for Dr. Garcia over by the nurses’ station and Harry hums in agreement.

Everything is covered in color from the paper butterflies hanging from the ceiling to the multi-colored carpets in the waiting rooms. The doctors and surgeons have printed scrubs and small stuffed animals clinging to their stethoscopes. The pediatric ward is different from the rest of the hospital considering the patient’s aren’t just surgical but all of the patients under eighteen admitted to the hospital. The teenagers are in a different hallway for their own sanity but the entire floor encompasses pediatrics.

They spend most of their first day learning in a surgical lab with tools smaller than what they are used to in order to accommodate the patient’s bodies. Harry’s hands have always felt too big to him but he’s never noticed it more than when he does simulations of procedures for newborn babies and even the operating dummies are dwarfed in comparison to his fingers. It’s a lot of the same simulations he’s done before, in clinicals and classes, but as with most things it’s different when the reality of actually performing the procedures comes steadily nearer.

In the evening, Harry and Zayn get an emergency page to the neonatal wing, leaving their dinner on the table in the cafeteria when they ran to answer it. They find all of the nurses and a handful of doctors are all huddled in a room when they arrive; a baby the size of two hands is in an incubator in the middle of the room with two women in bright pink trauma gowns on either side of her. Harry realizes, by the way they look down at the baby, that she is their daughter.

Dr. Garcia stands near the window and gets everyone’s attention, her voice carrying around the room. “Sorry for the 911 page, everyone. We just wanted to make sure you all came.” There’s a little bit of laughter but Harry has his finger in his mouth trying to get the lettuce out of his back teeth. Zayn nudges his shoulder, a smirk on his face. “Anyway, thank you all for coming to our very special party tonight.” Harry and Zayn glance at each other again; the baby in the middle of the room can’t be more than a couple of weeks old. “As many of you know, Athena wasn’t supposed to survive to term and then she was only supposed to live a couple of hours. I’m proud to say, our little warrior girl is now eight days old.”

A series of cheers goes up in the room and Zayn and Harry clap slowly along as realization of what they’re celebrating sinks in. One of the ladies sitting next to the baby stands up then, looking around the room. “Most parents will have countless birthday and holiday celebrations with their kids.” She swallows and Harry feels his own throat tighten. “We might not get that lucky and we want to thank you all for indulging with us to celebrate Athena. It means more than you’ll ever know.”

There’s more scattered applause before it settles fully, the moms posing for pictures with their baby and the doctors cooing over her as she kicks her legs, thin enough to be on a bird rather than a human. Harry catches Zayn eye and he’s not surprised to see their expressions mirror each other again. Harry knows they’re thinking the same thing; while the happiness is palpable in the room, the laughter bubbling, neither one of them has ever celebrated something this heartbreaking.

*

Harry and Zayn split time with another cancer patient, a six year-old boy named Brady throughout the next week. They’re supposed to keep track of when he winces with movement to determine how severe the cancer in his bones really is and if it’s reached his nervous system.

When Harry comes to take over for Zayn one afternoon, he finds him sitting cross-legged on the bed with Brady, action figures spread out between them. Brady has tubes running in his chest and up an IV in his wrist but he moves like they aren’t even there. Harry knows it’s not by chance but from practicing sitting in hospital rooms with tubes too many times before. Harry takes Zayn’s place on the end of the bed and Zayn hands him the sheet with tally marks and Harry sees it almost full of little black marks, each wince of pain.

Zayn runs his hand over the little boy’s head, as he stands, “Didn’t complain once this time, did you?”

“Not me. I’m going to be superman when I grow up,” Brady says looking between Zayn and Harry.

“Yeah you are,” Zayn bumps fists with him and laughs as leaves. “I’ll see what I can do about that pudding, little man. No promises, though.”

Harry falls into playing with Brady easily; asking him questions about his toys and making subtle marks on the sheet each time he winces, fluids running in a steady stream through the tubes and into his body. Zayn comes back awhile later with his finger pressed to his lips. He sets the pudding in Brady’s lap along with a spoon and Harry smiles so wide he thinks his face is at risk of splitting in two.

“I was never here,” Zayn whispers as he backs out of the room, shooting a wink at both of them. Brady hums while he eats his pudding, smiling over each bite. Harry makes sure to tell Zayn about it the next time he sees him. The way Brady didn’t stop smiling over it long after Zayn had left.

*

It’s the first Tuesday in orthopedic surgery that Harry wakes up to rain sliding down the window above his mattress. He’s never seen rain in August and he gapes out his window before he gets out of bed and starts getting ready. The summer has all but slid by while they’ve been in the hospital and whatever tan he’d developed from twenty-six years of living in Southern California has nearly faded from his skin.

He misses the bus while he tries to find a sweatshirt to wear to work and ends up jogging to the hospital holding his hood up but still getting splatters of rain across his face like spit sent straight from heaven. It doesn’t help that rain in August matches the season, warm and sticky, the humidity doing nothing for Harry’s hair.

He changes as quickly as he can when he gets to the hospital, his shoes wet and squeaking until he puts on his dry hospital-issued pair. By the time he gets to the orthopedic wing, Zayn is already standing there and talking with the head of the department, Dr. Jones.

“What’d I miss?” Harry asks Zayn in a low voice as they walk to the first patient’s room.

“Not much. Dr. Charles wants to debrief this afternoon with everyone and she told Louis to stop getting emotional when he watches surgeries in the gallery.” He grins and Harry rolls his eyes.

The two of them plus Louis and Liam had all gone out for drinks the night before. After only one round of tequila shots Louis started waxing poetic about how much he loves watching surgery, how beautiful it can really be. He went into a comparison of ballet and surgery that had Harry bent over laughing and Liam putting a hand over his mouth to shut him up.

Orthopedic surgery is an interesting specialty for Harry. Mostly because it involves a lot of consultations over shifting joints and shaving down bones that makes his stomach curl in a way blood never has. He’s in charge of checking on post-op patients for most of the shift so he doesn’t have to deal with too much crackling of tissue, which he’s thankful for. He’s heading to check the bone screws of one patient when Dr. Jones stops him in the hallway with the patient’s file in her hand. “She had the surgery this morning so she should be alert but I’ve heard she’s rather feisty,” she tells him with a slow smile.

Harry imagines the patient being an older woman with a fireball personality but he reads her file to see she’s a sixteen year old girl named Isabella instead. He’s not sure why she’s in the orthopedic wing rather than pediatrics but when he sees the giant contraptions hanging from the ceiling to hold her leg up, he understands. Isabella is slowly sitting up when Harry walks in, a nurse rushing around her and speaking quietly in a soothing tone. He pulls on a pair of gloves from the box near the door, already dreading touching her wound site.

“Are you another doctor?” The girl asks, a snarl against her lips that catches him off guard before he can introduce himself. “Your hair is frizzy as hell by the way.”

He raises his eyebrows at her but avoids running his hand over his bun, which, she’s probably right, has gone frizzy --it’s better than if he left his hair down, though he doesn’t bother explaining. “I’m actually an intern but I work with your doctor. She should be heading this way soon to check on you.” He smiles into the silence that follows and she rolls her eyes, disturbing the line of stitches just under her eyebrow. “I’m just checking your screws actually.”

“All right, intern,” she says slowly, a menacing catch in her voice, “You better not mess this up. Wanna know why?” The nurse glances at him before murmuring softly to the girl about relaxing and staying calm.

“Um, yes?” He tries for open and endearing as he twists his head around her brace to see the screws, composing his face to not squeeze his eyes shut over the sticky red wounds when his eyes land.

“I have a soccer game in two weeks and I need to be able to play and not be a quadriplegic. Are interns even allowed to say such big words?” She speaks slowly but with such biting emphasis that Harry takes his eyes away from the screws just to see her face.

“Well.” He bites the inside of his cheek, looking at the other side of her leg and touching the skin there gently, “That’s not the loveliest thing I’ve ever had someone say to me. Also, you’re not a quadriplegic. Just for future reference.”

“Don’t,” she says when he reaches out to touch the last screw, her face scrunching up.

“I have to, it’s my intern job,” he says it with a smile but bites down on his back molars to keep from saying anything else. The nurse asks her some pain questions while Harry finishes before standing back up and snapping off his gloves to toss in the garbage.

“Did you even do anything?” She has one eyebrow raised when he turns back around.

“I’m just here to check the site so I can report back on it to Dr. Jones,” he says grabbing his clipboard off of the side table.

“So you’re not even a doctor at all, then?”

Harry restrains himself from throwing out some sort of jab worthy of a sixteen year old and just smiles sweetly. “I really hope you feel better soon. Good luck with soccer.” He walks back out of the room with a prayer that another intern can be the next one to check on her. The same second he thinks it, he smacks right into someone in the hallway. He reaches forward, grabbing their shoulders to steady both of them, when he realizes it’s just Zayn.

“Sorry,” Harry says, taking his hands back off of Zayn’s shoulders. He tries not to think about the wiry muscles he just touched.

“No worries, I wasn’t even looking.” Zayn looks distracted as he tightens the half-bun he has in. Harry notices Zayn’s scrubs top is wet in places with something suspiciously like applesauce up the side.

“You all right?” Harry motions around at the mess.

Zayn pulls the fabric forward and groans at the side stain. “I thought I had gotten it all.”

“Did your patient throw apple sauce at you?” Harry tries to stop his laugh but it slips out.

“This was mashed potatoes.” He motions to one wet spot and then the next, “This is the water she spit at me and yes, apple sauce too, apparently. She must have done that one when I wasn’t looking.”

“You’re lucky she didn’t throw the commode at you, that would have been really wild.”

Zayn contorts his face at that as they step out of the way of passing nurses. “It turns out falling down the stairs was not in Ms. Young’s plans for her Tuesday and it’s all my fault she’s in the hospital.”

“Yeah, well, I got in a fight with a sixteen year old girl.” Harry shrugs, “So, we’re probably even.” He grabs for a paper towel from the dispenser near the next door and hands it to Zayn.

“Sixteen? Come on, Harry.” Zayn laughs, taking the towel and dabbing at the food on his shirt, “That’s embarrassing.”

“Okay, apple sauce, mashed potato man.” Harry gestures at Zayn’s shirt again.

“Are those the kinds of come backs you used with her? Because that’s a losing tactic already, babe.”

“Tactic? We didn’t actually fight, Z. That would be against all kinds of rules.”

“Okay but you have to get her to respect you the next time you talk to her.” Zayn throws the dirty paper towel in the garbage, “And you have to do that by being just as aggressive as she is. Otherwise she thinks you’re a pushover and you’re fucked. It’s like teenage girl gang initiation.”

“Who are you?” Harry drops his jaw open just slightly, “And do you regularly fight off teenage girls?”

“Hardly. I told you growing up with three sisters was a life altering experience.”

“Well, if I happen to meet her in a back alley again, I’ll be sure to be sassy.” Harry snaps his fingers then, in the Z formation Gemma taught him in elementary school and Zayn laughs so hard he nearly chokes. “Unfortunately, I don’t have any tips for you to stop old ladies from throwing things at you.” He scrunches his nose, “I always find a good compliment goes a long way.”

“I did that,” Zayn says with wide eyes. “Literally, I walked in with some of this,” he smiles slowly so only the top row of his teeth show, “Some of this,” he looks up under his eyelashes, “And then some, Ms. Young, you have the prettiest eyes.” The way he says the last part is slow and warm like melting chocolate and his eyes are so intensely focused on Harry’s face that he feels like it’s a real compliment directed at him. He has to take a step back, exhaling through his nose.

“Yeah, well maybe you came on too strong, then,” he says running his hands down his stomach just to have something to do besides make Zayn do something crazy like fake compliment him again

“Nah, I’ve been told my flirting techniques are on point,” he laughs and starts backing up as his pager vibrates. “I’ll see you at lunch, H.”

It takes Harry a second to gather his whereabouts before he heads to the next room, finding Mr. Dalson is more than excited to see him back after his consult yesterday and continue their conversation about football.

*

The emergency room is quiet when Harry gets there for his first overnight shift a week later. His shoes echo along the floors in an almost eerie way when he comes out of the locker room. Zayn is already there as usual with the head of the trauma team looking at something on the computer.

“It seems quiet tonight,” Harry remarks as his gaze slides around the empty trauma beds. With the curtains pulled back on each sector it looks like it could be a terrifying type of summer camp.

“Oh, Mr. Styles,” the head trauma surgeon, Dr. Polley, shakes her head with a knowing smirk. “The emergency room is never empty for long.” She has an air of mystery to her tone that makes Harry’s stomach drop with the anticipation of what could possibly be to come.

By two-thirty in the morning Harry is still wholly unimpressed by the ER. It’s always been hyped as the most stressful department, the one where the mania reaches levels of insanity. He’d even made sure to eat a bigger dinner than usual so he could be energized for the entire shift. So far, he’s organized the waiting room twice, refilled each clinical station with supplies and walked in circles.

One woman came in around midnight because she’d cut her hand while she was cooking. No one stopped to ask her why she was cooking at midnight though Zayn just about hip checked Harry to be the one to check her in and do the first look at her wound. That side of Zayn, the competitive side, when he has fire behind his eyes, sends a thrill up Harry’s spine. Since then, though, Zayn has been sorting out new gowns by sizes across the floor while Harry tests highlighters at the sign-in desk. He keeps staring at Zayn to try to telepathically make him look over but he fails miserably; Zayn’s focus is a one-way street.

_Nothing but thrills in the ER tonight._

As soon as he thinks the words, maybe before they’ve even registered fully everything is happening at once. The phone next to him rings, pagers start buzzing and beeping and the high screech of a siren echoes in the distance. Harry freezes as nurses pour in from other wings and Dr. Polley answers the trauma phone speaking quickly and sternly into the line. She hangs up and jumps up on the counter, everyone pausing to look at her.

“We’ve got an eight car pile up on I-5, one life flight coming in, six more ambulances at least. We’re the closest trauma center so we need all hands on deck and we need to be sharp. Take the first patient you can get to, assess and send them where they need to go if necessary. Prioritize and triage. There’s going to be big injuries and there’s going to be scrapes.” She claps her hands and looks around at all of them, a few other on-call interns coming in the doorway, “I’ve got cardio and our on-call general surgeons coming in, neuro is already paged for the life flight patient.”

Almost like a film, the doors to the emergency room pull open, the side by the ambulance bay, with an ambulance pulling up out front simultaneously. The drivers cut the sirens but leave the lights, the shadows of red bouncing in against the walls.

When the paramedics open the back doors there are no sirens needed, the screaming of the first patient shocks everyone into motion. The paramedics yell to the doctors over the patient who is flat on the gurney with her hands over her face as she screams. “Female, twenty-eight, went into labor on scene,” one paramedic yells, her iPad lighting up in her hand as she read off vitals

“Page an OBGYN, Harry. Ma’am, look at me, right here, honey,” Dr. Polley leans over on to the gurney focusing the patient’s eyes on her face.

It takes a second for Harry to realize he’s the one supposed to be paging the OBGYN before he’s around the desk and paging the two on-call while more patients come inside the doors on gurneys or, if they can walk, are escorted to the nearest beds.

Harry can hear the life flight helicopter roaring overhead and Dr. Polley dispatches a team upstairs to meet it. He grabs the next patient, a man with a laceration to his head. He does his first set of stitches on his own when Dr. Polley tells him there’s no one else available. The adrenaline rushes in his veins just like everyone always said it would in the ER but he takes deep breaths as he focuses on each suture.

Butterfly prints of blood trace the floor faster than they’re being cleaned up; scrubs are being changed just as quickly as gurneys keep coming through the open door. Nurses, doctors and interns run around as machines beep and orders are thrown across beds, curtains pulled shut, beds wheeled through.

Harry stands back by the ambulance bay waiting in the dull space between one ambulance pulling out and waiting for another one to come in. There’s a desperate hum in the waiting room as people wait to hear about their families and Harry turns his back so he can’t see any of them. Not right now. He jumps when the next ambulance is coming, putting on the new trauma scrubs over his and meeting the paramedics at the back door. A woman walks out first in a purple sweat suit with blood down her front as paramedics roll a gurney out behind her. Harry doesn’t get a chance to see who is on the gurney as the woman in purple runs full frontal into him, knocking him back a step.

“Ma’am, where are you bleeding from?” He puts his hands on her shoulders to get away from the gurney being pushed through. He grabs her wrists as she tries to pull away, the blood on her smearing on him as she thrashes in his arms. She starts shaking and screaming and he tilts his face back, holding tight to her wrists, small in his hands. “You need to stop screaming and I can help you. You’re bleeding.” He back pedals as she tries to free her arms again, “Please, ma’am.”

“It’s not mine.” She has clear blue eyes when she looks up at him finally, breathless with tears streaking her face. Harry blinks and looks down, her shirt is covered, part of her neck and her arms but, she seems to be right, none of it is actually coming from her. “The blood,” she shakes her head, “it’s my daughter.” The words come out distorted over another scream from behind them as the gurney rolls by and Harry finally sees a young woman under the thin blue blanket, one of the general surgeons rushing up next to the bed, talking quickly with the paramedics. The woman in Harry’s arms falls against him then; presses her bloody hands against his gown. His arms automatically go around her, his own heart pounding as he turns her away from the doctors looking at the woman on the gurney.

“Hey, we’re taking her straight to surgery,” one of the older residents, looks at him, “You need to get paperwork and waivers as soon as possible.”

The next half hour is tedious as he steers the woman to the nearest empty bed and cleans the blood from her skin. It turns out some of the blood was actually coming from her, scrapes along her arms and legs. She cries silently while Harry applies bandages.

Her hands shake when they’re done so Harry writes on the forms for her, asking her questions about her daughter. He knows it should be a nursing student but most of the patients are taken care of now and he doesn’t particularly want to leave her side. He grits his teeth as he asks her mundane questions about the health history on her side of the family, an emergency contact number for the patient as if she’s not sitting right there next to him. He knows it’s all part of the essential paperwork process but he can’t think of anything worse for someone to have to fill out about their kid whose status is currently unknown.

He walks with her over to the waiting room when they’re finished—it’s a complete mess though he’d cleaned it twice during his shift. He offers to get her coffee while she waits and she nods, answering her phone when it rings as he walks away.

The coffee is cold; he feels it through the Styrofoam cup in his hand as he walks back to the waiting room. He tried to warm it in the microwave but he’s sure it will taste thin and stale. He grabs a bottle of water too and offers both to her. She forgoes the water and grips the coffee with a shaky hand telling him her husband will be there soon.

He doesn’t know what to do, then. She stares down at the coffee cup in her hands, so lonely against everyone else clustered in groups of at least two as they wait for news. He straightens a pile of magazines on the table, a helpless support to her.

“I’ll go see if there’s news from the surgeon,” he says and she doesn’t even look up. When he calls up to the OR on the second floor, the nurse tells him there’s no news as of yet and he nearly slams the phone down in frustration of nothing to tell a worried mom. He places a gentle hand on her shoulder back in the waiting room and repeats what the nurse said. She looks up at him with blank eyes, like he’s completely useless to her. In that moment, he feels like he really is.

He wanders away eventually after a man rushes in and she goes right over to him, lets him wrap his arms tightly around her, and uses his chest to muffle her sobs.

“You’re on break.” A nurse tells him when he comes back to the desk and he nods, the ER quiet now, no screaming or blood, only patients in surgery or getting their stitches finished and last wounds patched up.

He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes as he goes to the vending machine in the hall by the locker room. He knows he’s an intern and he’s not supposed to heal the world but he’s never felt so helpless. Just a guy wearing scrubs. It’s not the first time it’s hit him like this. It’s the same echo of a feeling when he watched the failed heart transplant or a baby as big as his hand struggle to survive, like it’s too much to take on. This isn’t practicing in the classroom or memorizing facts, it’s holding a life in his two hands and, then, all the lives attached to that one.

It takes more self-control than he’s willing to have to not punch the vending machine, though he regrets the sting in his hand immediately after he does it. What he wants is a Snickers bar; something that doesn’t exist in the vending machines in a hospital. Besides the one in the back corner of the cafeteria but that’s supposed to be a secret. He buys the unhealthiest thing he can find, organic gummy bears, and stalks back towards the on-call room.

He knew it would be like this. Knew the organs and blood wouldn’t get to him and it would be the emotions to take the heaviest toll. Some of his professors in med school said they had to think of everything as a step, a procedure, a method in order to be successful but Harry can’t do that. He can’t ignore that lives are hanging in the balance, that it’s not just scalpels against skin or a surgical sensation.

“Harry!” Zayn comes from further down the hall and his voice makes Harry jump. “You okay?” He asks as soon as Harry turns towards him, his eyes wide but soft.

“I don’t know, really.” It’s honest, at least. He tries to smile but he can’t pull it off. “It’s a lot right now. This whole being a doctor thing.”

Zayn looks at him for a couple of seconds before he reaches out to touch his wrist, “Can I show you something?”

“I can’t. I’m only on break. I didn’t even get to eat these stupid bears.” He waves the pack of gummy bears around a bit.

“We’re actually off. They were looking at the hours wrong or something. That’s why I came to find you, actually. I saw you punch the vending machine too, by the way.”

“Oh, god.” Harry’s head falls back on his neck, “That’s embarrassing.”

He straightens up in time to see the corner of Zayn’s mouth quirk up. “So, technically I was checking on you and telling you our shift is over. And now I want to show you something.”

-

“You know this sign says ‘Do Not Enter’, right?” Harry lets the door slide shut behind them as Zayn leads him up yet another flight of stairs.

“Did it really?” Zayn acts surprised before grinning and continuing up. Harry rolls his eyes. They go up four more flights before coming out up on the last door and pushing it open to reveal the roof of the building.

“Is this it?” Harry puts a hand on his chest trying to subtly catch his breath. Zayn marched up the stairs like there was nothing to it and Harry did his best to keep up but he definitely doesn’t have his inhaler. It would be his luck to first need the thing after two years when he’s illegally on the roof of a hospital.

“I love it up here,” Zayn says as he let’s the door swing shut behind them. He spins around before sitting down on the brick ledge of the one of the skylights towards the center of the roof. He faces out towards the city, not high enough to see it all but a different perspective all the same. “When it gets to be too much down there I come up here instead. You don’t forget about anything per se but it’s a clear space, I guess.”

“It is pretty gorgeous,” Harry says. He walks over to the edge and looks out. He still hasn’t had that much chance to explore Portland or figure out where anything is but he can see all of the bridges in the distance, the river on the edge of the city in the dim light of dawn.

“Harry, can you, uh, like, back up?” Zayn’s voice has a tremor of stress in it that automatically makes Harry look over his shoulder at him.

“Why? What’s going on?” He looks down to make sure he’s standing on solid ground as he had assumed—he is.

“I just have a thing about heights,” Zayn says, his voice relaxing a bit when Harry takes a step back. He grins as Harry takes three more.

“Right.” Harry purses his lips, “But I’m the one on the edge. That scares you?”

Zayn nods, “It makes my stomach hurt, the thought of you falling over the edge or something.”

“Just me?” Harry pulls at his lip, tries to keep the embarrassing lilt of flirtation out of his voice. He’s always had that side to him but he tries to push it down at work, the light teasing and subtle edging. Zayn makes it increasingly difficult for him, though.

“I mean, anyone falling over the edge. But you,” Zayn shakes his head, “You’re one of those extraordinarily clumsy people.”

“Hey!” Harry gasps with wide eyes. He walks over to Zayn and sits on the brick edge next to him with a resigned sigh. “Guess I’ll have to sit by you, then.”

“Could be worse, babe.” Zayn pulls the gummy bear pack from Harry’s hands and tears it open. He puts a red one in his mouth before offering it back to him. Harry goes back and forth between orange and clear before going for green instead and biting its head off first. Zayn rolls his eyes but Harry thinks there might be something fond in it.

It’s quiet for a moment and Harry’s sure they could see the sunrise if it wasn’t for the cloud cover. There’s bright light shining through the edges to the left. Harry brings his knees up so he can rest his chin on them.

“I kind of like it, the ER. It’s fast paced, keeps you on your toes,” Zayn says with another gummy bear between his teeth.

Harry smirks, “I mean, you saw me down there. I wasn’t a stunning example of being good at being kept on my toes.”

“You are, though. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. Not to mention I’m with you almost every minute we’re in the hospital. I think I would know if you were absolute shit at your job.”

Harry barks out a laugh, loud against the silence surrounding them. “Well, shit, Malik, you’re making me blush,” Harry waggles his eyebrows if only to cover up the fact his cheeks have actually gone pink. “You have no room to talk, though. I assumed you were a robot the first few days. Just like a calm, cool, collected, gorgeous robot. You know? Unshakable.”

Zayn’s eyes squint just slightly and his lips part before he thinks better of it and swallows whatever he was planning to say originally and shrugs instead. “Yeah right. It’s more that I like to be able to control the things I can in order to account for the things I can’t. Like if I’m responsible, diligent and on time then maybe not as many bad things happen; scalpels slipping or busted valves.”

“Are you talking karma?” Harry readjusts his legs and rests the side of his head on his palm, entranced.

“Medical karma, maybe. I know it sounds dumb. I guess I control what I can and I try not to let what I can’t control hit me as hard. I don’t mean that I don’t feel the emotions behind what we’re doing but I can separate the emotions from the procedure, I guess. Does that make me sound awful?”

“No,” Harry runs his lip under his teeth, “Makes you sound like a surgeon, though.”

Zayn smirks, “Sounding like a surgeon is halfway to becoming a surgeon, I hear.”

“Hey, hey.” Harry laughs and presses his face to the tops of his thighs to stretch his back. There’s something about being on the roof that makes him feel braver than usual. Maybe it’s the exhaustion or the relief of being with someone he can call a friend, maybe it’s the quiet moments of dawn when nothing seems quite as harsh. “I also thought you maybe hated me. The first few days.”

Zayn laughs but he doesn’t look over.

“Are you laughing at me?”

“No, sorry. It’s not funny. It’s just that you scared me a little. That first day you were against that wall pulling at your scrubs and you grinned when I came out of the locker room.” He runs his hands over his face a couple of times.

“Was it a menacing grin?” Harry bites down hard on his teeth in what he would assume to be a menacing grin.

“Nah,” he knocks his knee against Harry’s. “I was so fucking nervous and wound up and there you were grinning like it was the first day of school. Scared me because I liked you right then, I think.”

“That’s a terrible reaction to have,” Harry says instead of indulging in the three hundred butterflies taking flight in his stomach.

“Right? And then you were so annoying,” he shakes his head and a little laugh bubbles out of his lips. “Like putting your hand over my book and trying to make me talk to you instead of focusing. Just being a brat but being really funny at the same time.” Harry goes silent listening to him talk, pulling at his lip between his teeth trying to let his words sink in. This is not nearly what he expected to hear when he followed Zayn. “I like control and you were a bouncing ball from day one.”

“So you didn’t hate me, then?” Harry tries to push him without saying it.

“Nope. I just figured it wasn’t a good idea to develop some sort of crush on a co-worker.” Harry hums trying to figure out where he’s going with this. “I wanted to be professional and all that. Wanted to stay focused, I think.” He shrugs and goes back to looking straight ahead.

Harry smirks; he’s only human and he’s only thought about Zayn in a not so friendly way so many times. “Right, yeah, totally. I agree.”

Zayn drops his head back to stare at the sky, “Have I told you you’re a shit liar Harry Styles?”

“I believe you might have,” Harry puts his hand over his mouth and rubs at his lips unsure how to tell Zayn he feels the same way.

“I guess I’m just happy to be friends with you? Like at first I was scared about harboring an illicit work place crush but now I kind of like the friendship aspect of what we ended up with, you know?” There’s a sinking sensation in Harry’s stomach just as he was trying to find words to articulate how he feels about Zayn; Nothing to stop a confession like being friend-zoned.

He swallows and nods, “I get that.” Zayn jostles him with his knee to make him look over. “I guess I like our friendship too,” he laughs as he says it. He can be friends with Zayn without hoping for something else. He’s sure he can. Or at least he thinks he’s sure he can.

*

Maybe Harry shouldn’t be all that surprised when he comes in for his next shift to Zayn laying on the bench in front of his locker with his hands over his face. Harry tries to subdue the sensations of sparks running through his veins at seeing Zayn waiting for him.

“Zayn?” He looks over his shoulder as he twists the combination on his lock.

“Oh, fuck, finally.” Zayn sits up and rubs his face. “I was going to wait for you before we go check in.”

“Yeah, and?”

He looks up at Harry. “Do you always run this late?”

“Am I late?” He looks at his phone, “Hey, look at that. I’m four minutes early.”

“You were making me anxious,” Zayn smiles slowly, “I’m always here twenty minutes before.”

“Are you really?” Harry never noticed Zayn being that early just that he was usually there before Harry. It takes him a second to realize it falls under the list of the things Zayn can control.

“The first day, I was almost late, remember?”

“The day I scared you, huh?” Harry laughs as he pulls off his shirt and puts his scrub top on.

“Dick,” Zayn tugs at the bottom edge of Harry’s hair; he ignores the pull he feels in his stomach from it. “No, I just freaked myself out that day. Just the thought of missing my chance by being late or sleeping through it.” He shakes his head, “I swore I’d be early for every shift from then on.”

“So I’m messing you up by only being four minutes early?” Harry teases while he undoes his belt and his jeans, shoving them in the locker and pulling up his blue pants.

“Yes, exactly.”

“Well, you didn’t miss your chance so you should really relax. And you didn’t have to wait for me.” Harry shuts the locker before sitting next to Zayn and untying his shoes. “I’m glad you did though.”

“Good.” He smiles at Harry and then starts tapping his foot, knee bouncing quickly, “You’re about to give me a stomach ulcer tying your shoes that slowly by the way.”

Harry shakes his head as he finishes the knot but he still laughs, “Wouldn’t want that now would we?”

*

Harry used to think nothing bad could happen in the daylight. As a kid, when he was scared of the dark and couldn’t sleep, his mom used to sit on the edge of his bed and tell him to close his eyes so he could meet the sun in the morning. Like the sun could bring happiness the moon could not. Harry’s day shifts in the ER are just another reminder that emergencies, trauma and pain stop for nothing.

There are burns and stitches, erupting appendixes, scratchy lungs, and migraines. Freak accidents and bloody traumas that make Harry’s heart ache in his chest. Patient’s and their families come in with blind panic most of the time unsure of how to explain something happening in their body they can’t see but can only describe as hurt. It makes each patient a puzzle for the interns to look at from all angles and poke and prod until they figure out a diagnosis. Sometimes it’s a quick fix or Harry gets to tell them they are overreacting to something small; other times Harry has to admit them into another ward for tests or send them straight to surgery while keeping his face as neutral as possible. Panic feeds off panic as Dr. Charles tells them after an intern breaks down in tears over a third degree burn from a house fire and they, as the doctors, are not allowed to panic.

By the end of their rotation in the ER, Harry starts to feel like the interns are all getting a familiar grasp on their routines and the chaotic lives they suddenly lead. Of course any semblance of familiarity is smashed in their weekly meeting with Dr. Charles. She tells them to start keeping thorough notes of the cases they are assigned because they will be tested on them in a culminating exam at the end of the year. She says the test will cover everything they’ve seen even the obscure cases with a smirk that says she knows exactly the kind of mayhem she causes.

“That woman feeds on our pain,” Louis mumbles as they all disperse. There’s a murmured agreement throughout the entire class.

*

Part of Zayn and Harry’s familiar routine has been meeting before they check in for their shifts ever since the day Zayn waited for Harry. If Zayn notices that Harry starts coming earlier and earlier so they have longer to talk and he can stick to his schedule of being twenty minutes early, he doesn’t mention it.

Liam comes running up from behind Harry and Zayn in the hallway one morning yelling their names after they’ve both just lounged in the locker room for close to an hour.

“What’s up?” Harry laughs as Liam spins around them, grabbing their shoulders before he keeps running. “We’re all going to the bar across the street tonight, Funky Tom’s. You’re coming!” He points at them before turning the corner. “Let’s say around ten?” The last part comes after he’s already disappeared, not even waiting for an answer from either one of them.

“I guess we’re doing that, then?” Harry sweeps his hair back into a bun.

“Guess so,” Zayn says grabbing their stethoscopes from the cubbies and hooking one around Harry’s neck for him. Harry swears up and down there is a chill in the room when Zayn’s fingers brush the edge of his neck and that is the only reason his skin breaks out in goose bumps.

Dr. Polley shouts from across the floor a second later and they snap to attention. “Harry we have a life flight on the way, meet the team at the roof. Zayn, I have three patients in beds who need stitches, an ambulance en route. Oh, and good morning.” She smiles over the last part before disappearing behind a divider and greeting a patient.

Harry goes in the OR on one emergency surgery in the afternoon involving shattered glass and a lot of blood. It’s not a complex procedure by any means but he feels an itch all the way through to his fingertips to pick up a scalpel and join the surgeon and older resident assisting. So close he could touch but still not allowed. It’s better, still, than watching from the gallery even for the most mundane procedures. He leaves the OR once all of the glass pieces are removed with a fluttering in his stomach, like he’s a surgical junkie and he needs another hit.

The adrenaline from being in the operating room sadly dissipates by the end of his shift. His legs ache, his ears are ringing from ambulance sirens and he’s starting to get a headache after forgetting to drink water as often as he should have. He’s walking to the locker room when a boy who looks about middle school age runs full force towards him and throws up just next to his hip, half of the vomit on the floor and the other half on him. “Sorry,” the kid mumbles as he keeps running into the bathroom just behind him leaving Harry to stare at his ruined scrub top and try not to throw up himself.

This has not been his finest Friday. He holds his breath, something he’s gotten good at in the past two months, and tugs the top over his head in the hallway, fisting it in his hands as a janitor comes over to clean up the floors.

Louis is coming out of the locker room as Harry approaches and he whistles at him before poking his bare stomach as he passes him. Harry rolls his eyes to the sound of Louis’ laugh and again when he yells, “Oh, Zayner, be careful, Magic Mike just walked down there,” as Harry goes into the locker room.

The door opens a second later with a very confused Zayn coming in, “Is he talking about you?” He points at Harry, following behind him towards their lockers.

“Obviously,” Harry turns towards him and grinds his hips in his best stripper imitation, running his hands over his stomach. Zayn smirks but Harry doesn’t miss the way his eyes trace the lines of his chest.

“Think you just got puke on your butterfly, there.” He points over the path Harry’s hands just took and his stomach lurches when he looks down. He squawks and runs straight for the shower, Zayn’s laughter chasing after him.

-

Louis is the first one Harry sees when he walks in to the bar that night. He’s standing in the middle of the floor with a drink in each hand grinning right at him.

“Harold, you came!” He runs over, handing Harry one of his drinks, “Some dude nurse bought me this so you have to drink it. It’s a Tequila Sunrise.” His eyes drop to look at Harry’s outfit. He’s got on his black jeans and black and white striped shirt with his brown boots and Louis hums approvingly. “So, this is what you look like out of scrubs and sweats,” he purses her lips. “I like it.”

Harry rolls his eyes as he adjusts the cross pendant he wears around his neck and twists one of his rings. They aren’t allowed to wear anything on their hands at the hospital so Harry had to crawl around his entire apartment to find his rings when he decided he wanted to wear them to the bar.

“The rest of them are over there.” Louis nods to a booth in the back, “And all of them refuse to dance because they’re lame so if you can convince them, send them my way.” He winks and knocks his hip against Harry’s before he’s spinning around and dancing back across the floor.

The bar isn’t particularly fancy by any means, just old wood, vintage art on the walls and a DJ in the corner, but Harry recognizes almost every face as hospital staff while he twists through the crowd looking for the interns. It’s clearly where everyone comes after their shifts though he’s a bit bothered it took the interns two months to discover it.

He sees Zayn first and silently chastises himself for letting it be that way--it’s not like he can help it. He’s only seen Zayn out of hoodies and sweats and scrubs a handful of times and seeing Zayn in a black leather jacket with his eyes closed laughing at Liam next to him is nearly enough to make him trip over his feet.

Harry drops his gaze around the table as he approaches, saying a quick hello to everyone and letting his eyes only slightly catch on Zayn’s a second too long. Then, he’s sliding in the booth next to a girl he recognizes as Leah who was pursued by the top surgical programs in the country before she picked Portland General. Harry has been a bit star struck by her ever since he heard about her from Liam at lunch the first week. She’s warm to Harry from the second he sits, launching into a story about getting lost on the way to the bar and wandering around the city for an hour before she figured out how to get back. She’s easy to talk to and Harry’s only pulled back from their conversation about football when Louis appears next to him with a wide grin.

“The guy got me another one,” he says, sliding another Tequila Sunrise across the table to Harry. “He wouldn’t if he knew how much I puke after I drink tequila.” He cackles as he backs away, singing to whatever song is playing. Harry would never think to peg someone like Louis as a candidate to be a doctor but he likes that he’s kind of a surprise. Like he never knows what he’s going to do or say until it’s happening. It’s an interesting way to live and Harry could watch it in action for hours.

He turns back to talk with Leah for a bit longer before she’s moving out of the booth and he moves next to a guy named Jason he hasn’t really spoken to that much. It’s like speed dating for interns as they shuffle around the booth, people getting in and out to get drinks. Jason, it turns out, grew up on a peach farm in Georgia and Harry is drawn in by his stories about his pet cattle.

He keeps glancing over at Zayn, though, just to see what he’s doing. He loses Jason’s story completely when Zayn laughs particularly hard so that his nose scrunches up. It’s especially distracting, after his third Tequila Sunrise from Louis and the mystery guy buying him drinks, when he starts thinking that _he_ should be the one to make Zayn laugh like instead of Liam. Even if Liam is one of the nicest people Harry knows. Still.

“It was good talking to you, dude,” Jason says as he moves around Harry to stand up, maybe sensing his lapse in attention to the conversation. Harry manages to smile sheepishly as he let’s Jason out of the booth taking a deep breath before he slides back in before he embarrasses himself ogling Zayn.

“Hey, you.”

Harry turns his head back to the voice realizing in all the shuffling around, he and Zayn have ended up next to each other in the booth.

“Hi,” Harry smiles and feels everything in him relaxing. It’s not that talking with the other interns was bad but turning to see Zayn feels like the ultimate comfort, like an exhale after holding his breath for too long.

“I like your,” Zayn purses his lips, “shirt situation.”

“Situation?” Harry acts offended as he glances down at his chest before he starts laughing. He stopped buttoning his shirts all the way when he was nineteen and he’s not too worried about what people think about it now.

“Not a bad situation.” Zayn shrugs, his eyes dragging over the ink on Harry’s chest slowly as he takes a sip of his beer.

“Hi, Harry,” Liam leans around Zayn to see Harry properly, wiggling his eyebrows like he’s communicating something Harry isn’t quite grasping.

“Liam Payne.” They all three turn their heads to Louis standing at the end of the table again, this time with his eyes trained on Liam. “Get out of the booth.” He says it with his jaw tight and out the corner of his lips. Harry hears him all the same, though, his eyes tracing back and forth between Liam and Louis. Liam looks between Harry and Zayn and then he’s sliding out of the booth like it’s on fire, accepting a drink from Louis as they disappear into the crowd already laughing at something.

“What was that?” Harry takes another sip of his tequila sunrise watching Zayn.

Zayn rolls his lip under his teeth. He’s so pretty when he does it Harry forgets about Liam and Louis completely the straw slipping from his lips as he gawks at Zayn’s mouth.

“No idea,” Zayn says with a quick shrug of his shoulders without taking his eyes away from Harry’s. “At least now I get you.” He grins after he says it and Harry tries to remember the friendship thing over the heat deep in his stomach at Zayn’s words.

Somehow they start a game of twenty questions except neither one of them keep track of who is asking what. They do rapid fire on favorite candy bars, childhood pets, what size scrubs they wear and their irrational fears among every other random thing they can think of until they’re both laughing hysterically over nothing important, Harry’s stomaching aching with it.

They start talking about who had to tell them about the birds and the bees although Harry can’t pinpoint who even asked the question about it. Zayn is talking about how his dad couldn’t talk to him for two days after their sex talk because Zayn kept asking questions, genuinely curious about the process and the exact physiological workings of an orgasm.

“You were clearly destined to be a doctor,” Harry says wiping at the corner of his eye. He can picture a kid version of Zayn with messy black hair perched on some sort of superhero bedspread grilling his dad with questioning eyes.

“I think all three of my sisters were probably a walk in the park after that.” Zayn shakes his head and pushes his hair back from his face.

They both look up when Liam slides a beer towards Zayn and another Tequila Sunrise at Harry from the end of the table; Louis watching over his shoulder and periodically crossing his eyes.

“What’s this about?” Harry asks as Zayn licks the foam up the side of his glass. Harry is momentarily distracted by how wide and pink his tongue is he chases the bubbles. He swallows and focuses back on Liam.

Liam just shrugs his shoulders a few times in a row. “Just drink and be cute together. Don’t complain.” He starts moonwalking backwards from them with Louis following like some sort of synchronized dance. Harry and Zayn exchanged a glance back and forth before simultaneously shaking their heads.

“That’s a very adult beer,” Harry says when Zayn takes a sip of the dark stout. It looks like rich, dark coffee.

“I am an adult,” Zayn scoffs. “For that matter you are too.”

Then they’re switching drinks, Zayn wincing over the Tequila Sunrise and Harry gagging loudly over the full hop flavor of the beer against his tongue. Harry takes the chance to tell his Tequila Sunrise stories from college and the epic hangover that had him puking outside one of his lecture halls.

“What about med school? You lay off the tequila habit by then?” The bar has gotten so loud they lean into each other now.

“Didn’t really have time for it anymore,” Harry props his head on his hand. “I worked at a bakery near school, to help pay for it and then I had classes and studying. I was pretty boring.”

“Don’t you think it was worth it though?” Zayn turns his body towards Harry even more, excitement coloring his voice. “I wasn’t exactly social. My roommate, Ant, wanted to kill me because I was always studying.” He laughs and shakes his head at a memory. “But I wanted this so bad, to be a surgeon. I could give up a night out to study for an exam or memorize cards or whatever. I just kept telling myself it would be worth it someday.”

“See, I did too,” Harry agrees, “and then I had a kid puke on me today, so I’m really questioning all of my sacrifices.”

“That’s a valid point. Might as well jump ship now, then.”

“Tell me a secret,” Harry says apropos of nothing.

“What? Why?” Zayn wipes his hand over his mouth but doesn’t shy away from Harry.

“I don’t know. I’ve had three drinks and I want to know everything about you.” Harry’s cheeks flush over the words because he had definitely not planned that to come out like that. “I mean, like, as intern partners and bonding or whatever.”

Zayn looks at him for a second, his eyes darting around his face, an internal battle Harry can’t understand. “I can do that. Um, let’s see, the only furniture in my apartment is a bed, a coffee table, a book shelf and a couch I got at a thrift store.”

“That’s a dumb secret,” Harry huffs and takes a sip from Zayn’s beer, his own glass empty again. He doesn’t wince this time.

“You can’t call my secrets dumb,” Zayn scratches at the scruff along his jaw.

“I don’t mean dumb,” Harry drags the word on, “Just like that’s not that secretive? I don’t know, like, I only have a twin mattress in my apartment and a beanbag. Oh and two barstools. It’s not that cool.”

Zayn looks down at his lap and then back up at Harry chucking, “Okay, I’ll give you that. We’re all struggling first years, huh?”

“Your struggle is not special, Zayn Malik.”

Zayn rolls his eyes at him, “Why are you still staring at me?”

“You have to tell me a better secret.”

He bugs his eyes out. “Another one?”

“It’s not _another,_ your first one officially doesn’t count.”

“Harsh, Styles, you’re harsh.” Zayn drains the rest of his beer and runs his hands over his face. “Okay, here. I’m a bit of a perfectionist.”

“No,” Harry draws out the word in a flat tone and Zayn rolls his eyes shoving him slightly.

“Maybe it’s not that secretive, then.” He laughs and rolls his lip under his teeth, clearly trying to think of another secret to tell.

“Maybe I notice because we’re together so much,” Harry offers. “I might not know that you line up surgical trays before you deliver them to operating rooms in a perfect square if I wasn’t your partner.”

“Shit. You notice that?” Zayn laughs loudly, his head falling back on his neck. Harry’s cheeks get a little warm before he reasons that there is really no reason for him not to notice. They really are together all the time. “I kind of want to get some air,” Zayn says as Harry drains the rest of his glass. “Come with?”

Harry licks his bottom lip, Zayn somehow making it sound like something so much bigger than walking outside. “Right now?”

Zayn nods, “Right now.”

Harry doesn’t see any of the interns around besides Liam dancing on top of one of the tables and Louis trying to get him down in between laughing so hard he’s bending in half. Zayn points at them and Harry waves as they walk by but they’re both too preoccupied to notice.

-

The alleyway on the side of the bar is dark with a few lamps hanging from the side casting a dull glow. The first chill is in the air but it’s not uncomfortably cold. Zayn leans back against the wall sliding a pink BIC lighter out of his pocket flipping it around.

“You smoke?” Harry asks backing up against the wall just next to him.

“Nah. Used to, though.” Zayn flips the lighter in the air and catches it again. “I did all through college and med school. And I would always get told off for it considering what I was studying to be.”

“I could see that,” Harry tips his head back against the wall looking up at the stars dotting the sky; so much more clear than the Los Angeles nights he's used to. “So you stopped?”

Zayn shrugs, “More or less. Some hospitals have their employees sign contracts about not smoking others don’t. I didn’t want to limit myself in the programs I could get into. So, I did one of those hypnosis tapes.”

“No way,” Harry looks over at Zayn, a laugh bubbling from his lips. “Like from Friends?”

He studies Harry for a moment. “Yeah, exactly like Friends.”

“And it worked?”

“For the most part. I still smoke from time to time when I get drunk enough.”

Harry drops his jaw and makes his voice go high, “Well aren’t you the walking scandal? Smoking against contract.”

Zayn scoffs and he knock at a rock with the toe of his boot. “I really do want to kick it for good, I swear.” He shrugs and puts the lighter back in his pocket, “Not to mention, smoking was nowhere in our contract for Portland General. I read that thing from top to bottom.”

Harry tips his head back and squeezes his eyes shut as he laughs. The sound is loud against the night but he doesn’t care. “I see right through you Zayn,” he says, still smiling. Zayn raises an eyebrow at him, looking over. “I do. You want everyone to think you’re mysterious—the bad boy with a cold heart who sneaks a smoke when you’re drunk but you’re not. Nope, you’re sweet like sugar.”

Zayn has to hit his chest as he chokes, stifling his cough into his jacket. “Never say that to me again.” Harry grins but stays quiet. “I’m not trying to be mysterious or the bad boy,” he puts his hands out slightly, “I can’t help if people are going to project their own assumptions onto me.”

Harry ducks his head and pushes his hair back from his face, quieter now. “Fair enough. But, like I said, I still see through you. You’re a good guy.”

“I see through you too, Harry Styles.” He tilts his head back and exhales, his breath curling visibly in the air like smoke. Harry waits to see if there’s more. “And it’s not just your fuckin’ sheer shirt either.” Harry laughs at that taking a step further down the wall and closer to Zayn so their pinkies are just touching.

“You never asked me to tell you a secret,” he says when the silence and Zayn’s inhales and exhales start to feel too intimate for two in the morning behind a bar.

“Tell me a secret, babe.” Zayn turns his head towards Harry resting his cheek on the wall so Harry mirrors him. He’s a bit taller but their eyes meet easily.

“My secret,” Harry closes his eyes and thinks. It’s a drunken haze but he thinks about a secret he should tell, something silly like cutting Gemma’s hair while she was sleeping when he was eight, and he thinks about the secrets he wants to tell and then his lips are moving before he can separate the two. “My secret is that I really, really, like you Zayn Malik.”

He opens his eyes after he says it and Zayn’s staring right at him, his eyes soft but his mouth set in a hard line. In a different world, Harry would lean forward and kiss him. At least until his mouth and his eyes match, so he smiles at Harry the way his eyes seem to be. Zayn’s hand shifts so their pinkies cross together. It’s a small point of contact but Harry can almost feel the air buzzing each particle shaking in anticipation. Harry goes so far as to bite his lip watching Zayn flex his jaw.

Suddenly Zayn pushes up off the wall and clears his throat, the moment broken. “I’m sorry,” he shakes his head kicking another piece of gravel along the pavement. “I just can’t.”

“Can’t what?” Harry says it softly because they talked about this on the rooftop already and he knows what Zayn is going to say. He shouldn’t have said anything at all when he already knows what is going to happen. Maybe he’s a masochist for the moment.

“I like you too,” Zayn closes his eyes, “A lot.” They open again to focus on Harry, circling all around his face like he’s begging him to understand. “But we have so much to focus on here, so much on the line, both of us. We can’t just fuck it up.”

Harry nods slowly. He’s not going to push it again. He can’t afford to. “No, I get it. Like, surgery over everything.”

“Yeah.” Zayn nods but his voice isn’t quite as strong. Still, he seems to have missed the lilt of sarcasm in Harry’s tone.

“I should go,” Harry says instead of pressing further. “I had fun tonight, though.” His eyes feel heavy as he faces Zayn, as Zayn takes the pink lighter out again and twists it in his fingers. “And it doesn’t have to be weird between us now, okay? Like back at the hospital we can just be normal.”

“No, yeah, same as always.” Zayn smiles and Harry tries to return it but he thinks it might be lopsided. He just wants to make sure they’re still on the same page; he doesn’t want to go back to stilted unease of those first couple of weeks.

“Goodnight, Zayn.”

“Night, Harry, get home safe.” Harry nods and heads back towards the front of the building. He considers going inside to see if Louis and Liam are still there but exhaustion creeps into his bones and he takes out his phone and gets a cab instead.

He thinks about Zayn for the entire ride to his apartment and then when he’s laying on his mattress that he really needs a bedframe for. Zayn lights up something in him, he’s not sure what it is, but another day of Zayn saying they can’t be anything but friends, is another day of that spark starting to hurt in a different way.

*

Waking up the next morning with only a slightly aggressive hangover, Harry sets his mind to exploring the city. He’s not sure he can pinpoint what exactly inspired him to finally figure out his way around Portland other than waking up and feeling like he should. He texts Zayn, Liam and Louis and hears nothing for over an hour so he decides to try it alone.

He walks down to the waterfront and nearly gets hit by three different bicyclists before he finds the walking path. He roams up and down, taking pictures to send Gemma and Niall, trying not to get too lost. He finds the parking lot where the food carts are and he spends far too long walking around and deciding on a lamb gyro from one of the Mediterranean carts. He eats it much faster than he anticipates ending up with tzatziki sauce down the front of his shirt that he tries to wipe away with napkins and really just smears it.

He gets lost four separate times as he walks back home while he tries to orient himself with everything in relation to the hospital. He ends up having to use Maps to get back home, feeling like a tourist with his eyes glued to the screen of his phone.

The second day off he goes to the grocery story and buys notecards and highlighters to start studying for their end of year exam. Dr. Charles keeps warning that if they get behind they’ll be screwed for the test as well as their careers and Harry has every reason to believe her.

He makes grilled lemon chicken for dinner while he catches up with his mom and then he calls Niall to hear about the struggles of being a second grade teacher. After, he spreads out on the floor as he writes terms and procedures on flashcards, thankful, for once, there’s no furniture to get in his way. He plays music on his phone when the silence starts buzzing in his ears and he won’t admit he’s lonely but he does feel quite alone. Harry has never been good at being on his own--he always likes to have someone nearby even if they are just sitting in the same room. He tries not to think about how nice it would be to have Zayn next to him.

*

“I can’t believe you’re like this,” Harry sighs as he approaches the main desk of the emergency room with Zayn.

“Like what?” He smirks, no tension after the back alley confession over the weekend just like Harry had hoped. Harry made sure to come in extra early just to make sure things were okay with Zayn, acting casually in the locker room and relieved to see Zayn reciprocate.

“All like, getting places on time and stuff. Or, sorry, not on time but extra early.”

“Well, I used to be late to everything, like _everything_. Another habit I had to break.”

“Break like smoking?” Harry raises his eyebrows and jumps back when Zayn tries to hit him.

Dr. Polley gets to them before they can go find her and she’s biting her lip as she approaches, “You both have an exciting day ahead of you.” Harry braces himself to hear the opposite kind of news. “You’ll each spend half the day watching trauma surgeries from the gallery and taking notes. You’ll spend the other half with my dear friend Anthony, in bed six, who has eaten approximately eighteen glass marbles in the last two hours, if our X-Ray is correct. He also ate the fuzz out of a stuffed bear so we can’t get the clearest view right now. He’s on drugs to help the marbles pass but you’ll be monitoring him, and the marbles, until his intestines are clear.”

Zayn asks before Harry can consider it, “Pass how?”

“Bile or stool, Dr. Malik. Bile or stool.” She smiles slowly, “ After that you can have dinner and your break before the overnight shift. Now who wants to do what first?”

Harry goes to the gallery first to take notes and stands in on the second surgery. They still aren’t allowed to touch anything in the operating room but just being inside of it feels like progress. Then, he shifts through stool covered in fuzz with one gloved hand over his face for the rest of the day. Zayn got eleven of the marbles out during his shift with Anthony and when Harry gets the eighteenth he just about breaks into an obnoxious dance. Instead, though, he does the responsible thing, which is to send Anthony down to get one last X-Ray and make sure the marbles are completely gone. No one could get a direct reason out of the kid for his marble consumption and between all of the bodily fluid Harry’s gotten out of him during the day, he doesn’t really press the matter.

He’s late taking his dinner break since he had to wait for Dr. Polley to check the scans and he finds Zayn with Louis already at a table in the corner. “How’d the last one come out?” Zayn asks as soon as Harry gets close enough with his sandwich.

“He puked it,” Harry says pulling back a chair and sitting down.

“Fuck.” Louis hands Zayn the cookie on his tray and he bites into it enthusiastically.

“Were you betting on it?”

“Yeah but I didn’t think he’d have it in him to puke it,” Louis says sadly.

“This is good dinner conversation, I like it,” Zayn says thoughtfully over another bite of the cookie.

Liam shows up at the edge of the table then, pulling out a chair with a sigh, “I can’t believe it’s only Monday.”

“Poor baby,” Louis says, a noodle falling from his mouth. Liam flips him off and steals a curly noodle from his plate.

“What’d you guys do over the weekend?” Liam asks.

“I slept for an entire day,” Zayn grins, “And then I studied the second day and did laundry.”

“That is thrilling. Truly.” Liam gives him a closed mouthed smile and Louis cheers.

“I did absolutely nothing too and it was glorious,” Louis grins until his eyes squint with it. “Wait, no, I also hijacked my sisters Netflix account and now plan to watch every episode of The Walking Dead.”

Harry twists the cap on his water bringing the bottle to his lips. What he really wants to do is tell Zayn he should have called him and they could have studied together. As friends. Studying friends. Study buddies, really. “I went to check out some stuff around the city,” he says instead.

“Alone?” Liam's eyes go impossibly wide, “What kind of hermits have I befriended?”

“At least I left my house,” Harry puts his hands up in his defense.

“Harry is all about about getting out and about so he doesn’t go crazy,” Zayn says tearing a bit of his sandwich off and winking at Harry.

“You make it sound so stupid.” Harry lands a swift kick to Zayn’s shin under the table.

“That was me,” Louis groans after Harry’s foot connects and they all start laughing. “That is some aggressive footsie, Styles,” he says while waggling his eyebrows.

Harry ignores him. “Anyway, I just want to see more than the inside of this hospital. Not that seeing you three is any hardship,” he adds on the last bit with a sweet smile.

“Love it,” Liam points at him, “Invite me to come with you.”

“How do you know I want you to come?” Harry raises an eyebrow at him.

“Of course you want me to come. We could start an adventure club and go different places together like hikes and cool restaurants.” Liam leans forward, his eyes bouncing all around their faces with a grin pulling at his lips.

“I might be speaking for myself only here but that sounds fucking awful.” Louis is the first to speak and he’s staring at Liam like he’s just spoken another language.

“I think that could be fun,” Harry says with an encouraging smile. He actually would like to explore more than he has at this point. It would be nice not to get lost at least.

“You absolutely cannot call it the adventure club,” Zayn says and Louis agrees right away.

“The LLZH Adventure Club. I love it.” Liam laughs as Louis tries to whack him with his water bottle. “This is good timing actually because I want to hike Three Pools anyway.”

“I’m down,” Harry bumps his fist against Liam’s outstretched hand.

“You too, Tommo,” Liam says and it’s not a question. Louis groans as he tries to catch a noodle from his fork with his tongue. “And Zayn don’t think you aren’t coming too.”

“Me?” Zayn touches his chest, “I’m an innocent bystander to this adventure club nonsense.”

“You didn’t leave your house this weekend either,” Liam says as an explanation.

“You’re bossy.” Louis shoots Liam a look as he gets up to throw his trash away. Liam doesn’t even fight it, just grabs his own trash to follow after Louis with a quick wave at Harry and Zayn.

Zayn rearranges himself to sit across from Harry while Harry readjusts the ties on his scrubs, cinching them tight along his waist. Then he sets to systematically picking through his salad eating the chicken, little tomatoes and croutons.

“That hike should be fun and just, like, doing stuff on our days off,” Harry says catching when Zayn only shrugs without saying anything in response. “You don’t think so?”

“No,” he puts his hand up, “I’m excited. Really.”

“You seem a bit hesitant.” Harry pokes at Zayn’s sandwich with his finger pulling off a piece of turkey and biting into it.

“I’m not,” Zayn says quickly. And then, “I think it comes back to that control thing? Like I always use my days off to recharge and focus back for the next shift. I don’t want to be worried about it while we’re out exploring or whatever.” He uses air quotes around exploring and Harry snorts.

“Only do what you’re comfortable with but I want you to come on all of the adventures, personally.” Harry grins and Zayn softens slightly. “At least come on the first hike. Please.”

“Maybe,” Zayn says but he smiles when Harry pouts his lips so Harry lets the ambiguous answer slide.

“Why did you get salad if you literally ate none of the salad part?” Zayn asks when the clear things away from the table but Harry just shoots him a look instead of an answer and Zayn starts laughing.

In the on-call room before their over night shift starts, Zayn gets into the top bunk and Harry crawls into the one below. “Did you set an alarm?” He asks as he curls in on himself wiggling his toes.

“Got it,” Zayn says and Harry hears the shifting of the mattress.

It feels like summer camp when they have to nap at the hospital in the on-call room with all of the bunks. Except at summer camp they put the boys and girls in the same cabin way past the age that they should have been sleeping in the same cabin. That’s how Harry got his first hand job, when Kayla Smithe crawled up to his bunk and slid in his sleeping bag with him. It wasn’t anything special, dry and kind of achy, while they sucked on each other’s lips but it was the idea of it all, more than anything, that had Harry coming in two minutes or less. He was too young to even try to be embarrassed.

So, if Harry falls asleep to a slightly altered fantasy of Zayn sneaking off the top bunk and onto his, well, no one has to know.

*

Nearly a week later Harry finds himself crammed in the back of Louis’ Honda Civic next to Liam, speeding down the freeway headed to the hiking spot Liam found.

Zayn has all but reclined the passenger seat into a laying position and makes Harry scrunch his legs closer to him to avoid being smashed. Zayn, at least, attaches his phone to the stereo alternating The Rolling Stones, Drake and some kind of low mumbling nonsense that Harry thinks he might actually like.

As soon as they get there Zayn strips off his hoodie reveal a black shirt with the sleeves cut off and stretched out to dip low over his thin form--it does absolutely nothing to stifle Harry’s crush. He figures it’s better to watch Zayn’s fingers twist his hair into a headband than let his eyes drop to the swooping cut of his shirt. Especially not the tight wrap of muscles on his stomach or the ink on his sides, worse the beginnings of ink that makes Harry want to pull the fabric further to see more of.

Liam is overtly enthusiastic as they climb up the trail; hairpin turns and chunky gravel sliding under their feet. Whenever they get to a corner, Harry tries to gage how much further up they have to go by leaning over the edge and looking up. He doesn’t miss how each time Zayn rests his fingertips against the back of his elbow, like he’s ready to catch him if he falls.

“This is hell,” Harry announces when they’re halfway to the top pausing on the middle of a particularly steep incline. They all pass a water bottle back and forth though Liam lets it pass him by a couple of times because he’s too busy doing squats to keep his legs warm as if the sun in the center of the sky isn’t doing his muscles enough favors. “I thought I was so fit too.”

“I knew I wasn’t,” Zayn says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “And yet you still dragged me up here.”

“I couldn’t drag anything even if I wanted to,” Harry adjusts the headband he has on to keep his hair back, “I can barely get my own ass up this mountain.” He swallows when he realizes Zayn’s eyes are tracing the side profile of his body and it makes his breathing go a little erratic, more than the hike itself.

“If you’re done complaining,” Liam interrupts Zayn’s gaze, putting the water bottle in his backpack, “We have a few more miles to go.”

“If you could stop being so excitable about this hiking shit that would be fantastic,” Louis counters even as he follows after Liam staying close by his side if only so his complaints can be heard better.

“You know, I have physical activity induced asthma and I didn’t bring my inhaler,” Harry says a little while later when he’s star fished on a slight rock wall and trying to swing his leg up to the next step.

Louis cackles from just above him but he feels Zayn’s fingers curve around his bare ankle. “You okay, babe?” His voice is quiet, his grip unexpectedly soft.

Harry looks down at him and the concern in his face collapses something in his heart, some vital valve, he’s sure. “Yeah, no, I’m good. It’s like if I’m running continuously or something. I’m just being dramatic--I haven’t actually used it in like two years.”

“Tell me if you need to stop, though, okay?” He squeezes Harry’s ankle once and then he’s overtaking him on the climb, beating Louis to the end of the rock trail while he yells and threatens to push Zayn over the edge. Harry only has to take two steadying breaths that he blames on the fading summer heat before he follows them up. Zayn looking out for him is pure friendship, Harry knows, but he can’t seem to get the fluttering in his stomach to understand.

Up over the edge they come upon a completely flat surface. Harry raises his arms over his head in a victory celebration, spinning around until he feels dizzy.

“This isn’t where we’re stopping,” Liam says, starting to walk over the flat area towards a forested part. “We have two more miles to the pools.”

Harry’s protest dies in his throat when Zayn lifts his tank top to wipe his face and Harry can see the ink across his hips, the heart he spotted that very first day and writing along the opposite side.

“Liam, I hate you,” Louis grumbles but he still follows. Zayn and Harry fall in line behind.

It seems like another hour of paths and rare shady patches before they come out to the clearing to the three pools and the top of a waterfall Harry never saw on the way up. The pools are shades of blue and green like something more out of a book than real life. There aren’t many people around just a few couples wading in the water, a couple of families sun bathing. Harry climbs up to one of the large flat rocks covered in sunlight collapsing on his back with his hands up over his head. He knows sweat has soaked through his shirt and he can feel drops of it in his hairline.

“This is it. The end. I’m dead,” he moans only to be hit, a second later, with one of Louis’ flying socks that makes him gag and splutter as he throws it off.

“I’m getting in,” he says over a laugh hopping back off the rock with his shoes and other sock left behind.

“Wait for me, I’m coming in an hour when I can move again,” Harry calls after him, laying his head back on the rock and closing his eyes.

“Zayn, he’s dying, give him mouth to mouth,” Liam calls from somewhere just in front of them followed by the splash of him jumping in the water after Louis.

“Yeah, Zayn, give me mouth to mouth.” Harry laughs with his eyes shut, kicking his legs around dramatically. He feels a shadow over his face before he opens his eyes and when he does blink open, Zayn’s face is looming in front of his. “You don’t actually have to,” Harry says and tries not to squirm with Zayn’s eyes on him.

“Wasn’t going to,” he says and then the corners of his mouth quirk up in an almost smile and it makes Harry’s heart beat a little faster.

“Oh, well, fine then.” Harry pouts out his bottom lip to fight the urge to lift his face to meet Zayn’s mouth with his own. And he could, it would be so easy. Especially when Zayn drops his gaze to Harry’s lips and his lips aren’t curling up anymore, in fact they might be turning down as he studies Harry, dark eyelashes fanning over his cheeks. It’s like the air is charged around them again just like it was in the alley behind the bar; a magnetic connection pushing them towards each other, edging them forward.

But Harry can’t, he won’t. Zayn said he doesn’t want to be distracted and he wants to be friends and Harry understands it. Or, he’s pretending to, at least. So instead of lifting his neck and closing the gap, he grins and says, “Hey, you have a freckle in your eye,” as if he hadn’t noticed it the first week he spent with Zayn, as if he didn’t already have an embarrassing amount of things memorized about him.

Zayn clears his throat as he sits back beside Harry instead of leaning over his face. “Yeah, I do. I used to hate it, actually.”

“You shouldn’t,” Harry says, stretching back into the sun and closing his eyes, “It’s the only redeeming feature on your god-awful face.” He can barely hold his laugh in for two seconds and it’s no help when Zayn reaches over to pinch the soft part of his hip and leaves him wiggling away on the rock until he threatens to roll off the edge and die if Zayn tickles him one more time.

*

Harry read, re-read and highlighted the orientation packet when he got it the week before their residency started but the announcement of the first solo assist surgery competition sends shock radiating up and down his body.

The interns will have one week of lectures and simulations before they have to perform them at random for the Chief of Surgery. The one who they feel does the best will get to assist in a live surgery the following week. Dr. Charles calls them together to announce it one morning, leaving them stunned and trying to process the information as she walks away with a smile.

“I swear she always does this on Mondays just to torture us,” Liam says coming up behind where Zayn and Harry are standing. He hooks his chin over Zayn’s shoulder and closes his eyes. Louis comes up and tries to do some sort of karate move that takes Liam to the floor. Harry watches it all with wry amusement.

“You’re pink,” Harry places gentle fingertips along Zayn’s cheek where his skin is clearly burned, save for the lighter lines of where his aviators had rested for the hike.

“Sunburn,” he says, poking back at Harry’s own pink cheek without the smooth touch Harry offered him.

“Asshole,” Harry slaps at his hand and moves to the other side of Zayn before a rolling combination of Louis and Liam can take them down.

*

Their first lecture to prepare for the end of the week test is the following morning. Harry makes sure to get to the hospital early to find the auditorium—a foresight he imagines would make Zayn proud. He realizes he’s not the only one who had the idea, though; the other interns are already seated in the first two rows. He walks towards them with a wave and a smile and at least tries to pretend he didn’t spot Zayn right away. Harry nods in his direction, like an offhanded gesture, not like he’s imagining what his scruff would feel like on his thighs, which he spent much too long considering the night before anyway.

Zayn catches his eye when he starts to move towards the back and waves him over, moving a sweatshirt sitting over the empty seat next to him to his lap. “You really thought I wouldn’t save you a spot?” He whispers when Harry sits down. Harry has to bite his lip over a smile and a whispered, “Thanks.”

Taking notes on the procedures is easy enough but Harry can’t remember a lecture, even from med school, where the focus was so laser sharp. His only distraction comes from glancing over at Zayn and seeing the attention he puts in as he takes notes, his tongue sliding between his lips as he carefully draws diagrams.

They spend their lunch on the rooftop discussing their mutual love of Boyz II Men and 90s R&B. Zayn almost falls over when Harry starts talking about it, says he hadn’t really thought of Harry as the type to enjoy it. Harry’s demonstration of the stare down he perfected from the “End of The Road” music video he used to watch on MTV proves Zayn wrong. His laugh echoes around the empty rooftop and he doesn’t give Harry the chance to be embarrassed before he asks him to do it, “Just one more time, please, babe.” Harry obliges, pursing his lips and squinting his eyes as he lifts his head slowly to smolder in Zayn’s direction. He and Gemma used to do it at the dinner table—it drove their mom nuts.

“Well, since we’re revealing embarrassing moments,” Zayn says when he’s recovered from laughing, his cheeks even pinker than the burn had left them, “I should probably tell you my ‘Make Love To You’ story.” It turns out the teenage version of Zayn thought he was smooth and played the song during one of his first make out sessions in his room when his parents were out of town. Mid-way through he got off the bed to start dancing to the song effectively killing the mood.

“I don’t get it.” Harry frowns, “What the fuck kind of dance were you doing that killed a hook up?”

Zayn gets up to do it and Harry nearly busts a vein in his forehead he’s laughing so hard at the aborted thrusting movement of Zayn’s hips.

“In my defense, I got better over time,” he says, sitting back down with a wink. “I have excellent hip control these days.”

Harry keeps laughs and pretends his mouth hasn’t gone completely dry.

The next day is spent practicing sutures on their breaks from their shifts, doing both the interrupted and uninterrupted styles on plastic dummies with synthetic skin. Harry finds one of the stations in the lab has half of a needle broken off into it--he’s not sure what went wrong there. He meets Zayn up on the roof for dinner, this time quizzing each other over the procedures from the day before and Zayn making Harry do the boy band stare down only twice.

Their third day of practice ends up being the most challenging. They have a morning meeting with the Chief of Surgery where he goes over each exercise with a simulated dummy that makes an obnoxious error sound if the interns make a mistake that would cause fatal damage in an actual patient.

Harry does fairly well with each procedure; they all do, really, at least until they get to the neuro practice. The piercing error noise gets its best use as they attempt to operate on the simulated brain without proper vision, only using laparoscopic cameras.

“We have a lot of dead patients in here,” Dr. Charles says as she walks around behind them. “I want no dead patients.”

Harry’s almost sure his buzzer goes off the most out of anyone’s as he twists his wrists to avoid the spinal nerve and hits it every single time. His cheeks have gone red with frustration as he tries again and again, his bun falling looser after each time he shakes his head in an attempt to refocus. “Fuck.” He drops the sensor and pulls his hand back on the sound of yet another error buzz and he tries to take a deep breath. Zayn catches his eye from across the table and he manages a smile when Zayn crosses his eyes while sticking his tongue out at him.

By the time Harry gets to the locker room after their shift his fingers are itching to try the simulation again especially as Liam rattles on about how nervous he is.

“You’re gonna be great, Li.” Harry knocks his shoulder against him and gives him a reassuring smile. Liam was meticulous in the lab earlier, twisting the tools like a professional. Even Louis managed easily, he cursed nearly the entire time but Harry didn’t hear his error buzzer go off nearly as many times as his.

In the hallway, as they head towards the front doors, Liam starts to tell him a story about a patient. He can hear Zayn talking to Louis vaguely in the background but most of it is a blur as he nods along. He already knows he’s going to lay in bed, restless, replaying the movements of his hands over and over again and then he’ll go to the test tomorrow and they’ll ask him to do the neuro exercise; he’s sure of it.

“You know what?” Harry interrupts Liam, stopping suddenly. He pats the pockets of his jeans, “I think I forgot my phone.” He doesn’t pause or wait for anyone to say anything just turns and rushes back towards the practice lab.

It’s dark inside but the door is unlocked and swings open easily. He goes to the nearest station, already set up for the neuro exercise and he plugs in the sensor, putting it on vibrate instead of the buzzing sound since he doesn’t think his ego can take much more of that.

Right away, it feels wrong. His hands are shaky and his movements feel disjointed, like his hands are moving without his consent. The frustration builds in him like a bubble ready to pop as he twists his hands and ignores the vibrations of the sensor with each move.

When the door to the lab suddenly opens he drops the sensors to the table. He clasps his hands behind his back even quicker—fear overweighing the shock at being caught in the hospital past his max hours.

It’s just Zayn though, leaning in the doorway and looking around, “I thought you might be here,” he says coming in the room fully and shutting the door behind him. Harry sighs in relief and grabs for the sensors again.

“I just need to get this,” Harry says cracking his neck and going back to it. His hands are shaking again and he knows it’s mostly the exhaustion of the day but part of it is Zayn standing just next to his shoulder. “I can’t have you watching me, it makes me nervous.”

“Okay.” Zayn laughs lightly and starts walking around to the other stations. Harry tries to zone in and focus, picturing exactly the right moves to make but cursing out loud when the sensors buzz in his hands. He’s too busy staring at his hands and wondering why they won’t do what he needs them to do to notice Zayn standing back by him.

“You need to take a break.”

Harry looks up, already shaking his head, “No, I have to get this, Zayn. I won’t be able to sleep, I’ll drive myself crazy over it.” Zayn smiles softly, something melting in his eyes in the special way it does, as he takes the sensors from Harry’s unwilling hands and moves them behind the simulator.

“Just let me try one more time.” Harry reaches his hands out to chase the sensors.

He goes to say something else but then Zayn is taking his hands in his and looking right into his eyes with a smirk and the impatience at not practicing fades a little. “You’re tired and you’ve been beating yourself up all day over something you’ve just learned. We aren’t supposed to be able to operate on brains yet, if you didn’t know.”

“I just want this,” Harry says looking down at where Zayn’s started rubbing circles into the backs of his hands with his thumbs. His voice sounds abrasive to his ears but Zayn doesn’t flinch back.

“Babe, we all do.” He let’s go of one of Harry’s hands to reach up and tuck a curl behind Harry’s ear, then lets his hand slide down until it rests on the side of his neck, his thumb over Harry’s jaw. There’s energy in his touch, again--like his fingertips could shock Harry if he wanted them to. It takes a lot more than just the muscles in Harry’s neck for him to not lean into the touch. “But I know you just worked a full shift and you’re not supposed to be in the hospital at all,” Zayn continues, “So, you’re going to go home and sleep. Then, you’ll come back tomorrow morning and you’ll get this on the first try. Second depending on if you need a warm-up.”

Harry bites the inside of his lip, the roll of Zayn’s voice easing the tension in him. “How do you do that?”

“What?” Zayn tilts his head slightly and his lips twitch.

“Make it sound like that’s exactly what’s going to happen?”

“Because it is,” Zayn says with a slow smile. “And that’s what I’m planning on doing too because I’ve been killing my mind by thinking about this dumb sensor all day. And I know you have too because you get this little wrinkle in between your eyebrows when you worry.” He runs his thumb over Harry’s jaw as he speaks, the same repetitive movement calming in a different way then when he was holding his hands a moment ago.

Harry tries not to let the shock of the statement register on his face, that little piece of him Zayn has memorized. There’s a beat of silence before Zayn’s the one leaning in, his head shifting minutely as he gets closer. Harry inhales the last breath between them before Zayn’s lips press against his, so simple and gentle, it’s almost like it doesn’t happen, like some sort of fantasy in Harry’s exhausted brain. He blinks slowly as Zayn takes a step back, his hand sliding from Harry’s neck over his shoulder and down his arm until it drops.

“I thought you were focusing,” Harry whispers when Zayn’s stepped back from him.

“I just figured I could learn to multi-task,” Zayn says biting his lip, his words slow and measured. Irresistible is what it is.

Harry’s nodding emphatically before he can even get his words out. “Multi-task, yeah, yeah, okay.”

“If you want.” Zayn smiles and for everything about it that’s smug, there’s the sincerity there that has been tugging at Harry’s heart for too long now.

“Yeah. Yes. I do.” Harry leans forward and braces his hand on Zayn’s neck, fingers curling around to the ink that pokes out of his shirt in the back. He tilts his head to kiss Zayn again, slowly, their lips coming together in gentle presses and pulls. Zayn slides on hand low on Harry’s back, his fingers curling under the edge of his sweatshirt as he deepens the kiss, coaxing Harry’s mouth open until his tongue can trace his teeth. Zayn pulls back with a bite against Harry’s lip, dragging it through his teeth in a way that has Harry moving himself back before he does something he regrets in the lab at his place of work, like get on his knees.

Zayn is watching him, his eyes hazy and his lips red, so Harry kisses him twice more, quick drags across his lips before he’s taking three steps backwards and making Zayn laugh with his eyes crinkling in the corners. “See? I do want,” Harry says, swallowing. Zayn just nods, biting his lip again as he smirks at him. Harry is sure his face is pink and his lips have gone cherry red just like Zayn’s but he tries to compose himself, and stop silently reveling over the taste of Zayn on his tongue, a tangy sweet he only wants more of. “Was that a grand distraction to make me stop operating on dummies after hours?” Harry goes for flippant and Zayn rolls his eyes but a smile pulls at his lips.

“You caught me.” He puts his hands up in surrender.

“Malik, you sly dog.” Harry pokes his stomach sliding backwards even further before Zayn can retaliate.

“Did it work, then? You wanna leave?”

“You’re nothing if not an inspirational surgical coach,” Harry says leading their way back to the door, a stupid big grin on his face, his lips tingling.

Zayn pumps his fist in the air as the lights go off and the smile he gives Harry has butterflies erupting erratically in his stomach all the way back to his apartment.


	2. Chapter 2

Whatever butterflies Harry thought might linger from the lab with Zayn dissipate almost as soon as the low vibrations of his alarm wake him the next morning. He gets ready by putting his shirt on backwards and then by not realizing it’s inside out until he’s in the locker room and Liam pulls him forward by the tag with his mouth curling into a grin.

Harry has taken big tests before, been put under pressure more times than he can begin to count, but it doesn’t change the nerves deep in the pit of his belly. He changes into his scrubs as quick as he can before he runs down to the practice lab and hooks up the neuro simulators. There are already a couple of other interns at the different stations and it’s the tiniest bit of a relief to see he’s not the only one on the verge of losing his mind.

At eight, when they’re all supposed to meet up with Dr. Charles, Harry feels only slightly more confident about the procedure as he jogs up to the group. Zayn is already there, leaning against the counter flipping a note sheet back and forth. He catches Harry’s eye when he stops to stand towards the back of the group and mouths a quick, _Hi,_ before looking back down at his sheet. Harry can see the tension in Zayn’s jaw from his side profile and he feels the same lines forming along in his own face.

“Oh my good god.” They all turn as one when Dr. Charles voice comes from behind them. “I can almost smell the fear rolling off of you and I’ll tell you right now to calm the hell down. Surgeons aren’t nervous; they’re confident, competitive, composed. Today, you need to be surgeons.”

Harry feels like the power bar he ate for breakfast is trying to come back up his esophagus but the girl next to him, with a tight braid, rolls her shoulders back and lifts her head, appearing much more like the ideal surgeon than Harry feels.

Dr. Charles rolls through a list of announcements including when their tests are scheduled (Harry and Zayn during lunch) and where the announcement will be posted (six o’clock outside the on-call room on the third floor) before she sends them off to their rounds with quick flicks of her hands. The group shuffles around to head in different directions with Harry and Zayn coming together in the middle.

“Hi.” Zayn’s eyes roam Harry’s face his hand twitching against his thigh like he wants to reach out and touch him.

Harry smiles slowly with a quiet, “Hey,” that makes him feel like he’s talking to his crush at the school dance.

“You alright?” Zayn takes a small step closer and Harry nods.

“Yeah, good.” He pulls all his hair back like he’s going to put it in a bun before dropping it all.

“You mess with your hair when you’re nervous,” Zayn says but the corner of his mouth is turned up.

“Maybe because I am nervous,” Harry says sarcastically with wide eyes, though he catalogs yet another thing Zayn noticed about him before he realized it about himself.

“Let’s not think about it until right before lunch, okay?” Zayn says. “No point stressing leading up to it.” He says it so easily and Harry wants to agree but he’s not sure Zayn can unknot the tension in his stomach with just his words. “Or you’ll fuck up royally and become a street performer instead of a doctor.”

Harry barks out a laugh at that. Of all things that should make him feel better a joke about the demise of his career shouldn’t be one of them. Somehow the laughter lightens the weight in his chest. Zayn looks rather pleased with himself.

“I’m going to throw up,” Louis announces as he walks by them, “I am absolutely going to puke on that simulator and short out the sensors.” Liam runs after him clearly trying to calm him down though Louis is a bit like a runaway train.

When Harry and Zayn are released for lunch from their shift they both walk down to the testing center, silently.

Just before they go down the hallway leading to the lab, Harry tugs Zayn’s hand to make him stop, “Wait a second.” He grabs Zayn’s face with both hands and kisses him as hard as he can, Zayn gasping when Harry pulls back, his lips slick.

“You’re going to be great,” Zayn says, kissing Harry one more time fast. “Shit, I’m going to be great too. We’re going to kill this, babe.” He kisses the corner of Harry’s lips and winks before he turns to lead them down the hallway. Harry has no choice but to follow him, biting his lip over a too-big grin.

Zayn is called into the lab first and Harry closes his eyes with his head tipped back against the wall until his name is called. He takes one deep breath with his hand on the door handle, puts on the best smile he can manage and walks inside.

It goes well, Harry thinks, as he’s checking post-op vitals back in the general surgery wing with one of the nurses. Zayn was already gone by the time he came out, assigned to some other task and long gone when he got back to his shift.

He knows he did just fine on the procedure descriptions and the stitch was one he’s been practicing since his clinicals during his third year of medical school. He released a huge breath when he got assigned an appendectomy simulation over the brain tumor set but he still jumped when he moved the sensor wrong causing it to buzz in error. He had stopped and took a deep breath to steady his hand before he continued and the Chief commended his control before Harry left the room. He’s not one for taking compliments straight to his heart but a compliment from the head of his program still has him floating.

He’s not overly confident when he walks up to the bulletin board just after his shift ends at six, though. Their entire class is stacked with talented surgeons and any of them could logically make a case for being the most talented. There’s no one else near the white page tacked against the wall; they were probably there right when it was posted. Harry glances around, as he gets closer, the black print coming into clearer focus. He reads the ZAYN MALIK printed in the center of the page at the same time a grin bursts on his face.

“Zayn,” he whispers and turns around immediately, eyes searching for dark hair and hazel eyes. Adrenaline rushes through him like he’d gotten the first surgery himself as he runs back through the hallway punching the button to the elevator and biting his lip while he waits.

When he gets off downstairs he sees Zayn in the distance still in his scrubs and heading the opposite direction, away from him. “Zayn,” he calls, apologizing when one of the other residents seems ready to reprimand him for yelling in the hospital. Zayn turns automatically and there’s hesitation in his face as he looks at Harry. Harry barely registers it, barreling into him and wrapping his arms around him. “Congrats,” he says rocking him back and forth. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Harry, let me breathe,” Zayn laughs, pinching at the soft part of Harry’s hips until he steps back. It takes a moment of control for Harry to swallow instead of kissing Zayn’s smile, small like he’s proud of himself too, but reserved as to where he doesn’t want to rub it in.

“If it couldn’t be me, it had to be you,” Harry says seriously, clasping his hands behind his back.

Zayn blinks three times fast, “You’re sweet you know that? You told me I was sugar sweet but it’s you.”

Harry tries not to blush but his cheeks feel warm anyway. “Well, can I be extra sweet and take you out to celebrate? Tomorrow maybe?” Zayn bites his lip, eyes searching Harry’s face with the hazel seemingly clouded. “Like, just casual,” Harry squints trying to read Zayn’s expression, “Friends at dinner or like breakfast, maybe. Just eating food.” Last night Zayn’s mouth, his slick pink lips, had said he could multi-task and again, in the hallway a few hours ago, but now he’s looking at Harry like he’s answering a question no one ever asked.

“Is this you asking me on a real date?” Zayn points at him with his finger.

“I think so.” Harry rocks back and forth, nervous now. He really does want to take Zayn to dinner but maybe he’s got the wrong idea. Maybe he should invite Liam and Louis to come with them or something. He goes to say as much when Zayn starts laughing, obviously enjoying the fear he’s briefly placed in Harry.

“Of course, yeah,” Zayn says, “I would love to go on a real date with you.”

Harry closes his eyes and rubs at face making a low moaning sound deep in his throat. “You scared me and you’re such a dick.”

Zayn keeps laughing at him, reaching for one of his hands and holding it in both of his, “I’m sorry.” He pushes forward and kisses Harry softly, lingering long enough for Harry to smell the body wash he uses, a warm vanilla. “For the record, though, you are really cute when you get flustered.”

Harry rolls his eyes and rolls his teeth over his bottom lip. “Just for that I’m picking where we eat.”

“Off the adventure club list?” Zayn’s grin is wide across his face, teasing. Harry purses his lips at Zayn but then he can’t help it either and he’s smiling back at him right as Louis bursts out of the locker room to tell them a story.

*

“It’s called what?” Zayn pushes his hands into his coat pockets as they walk, the air chilled as fall starts full swing.

“Waffle Window,” Harry says trying to look at the Map directions on his phone. “It’s legendary. According to the internet.”

“You’re so touristy.” Zayn laughs, “But I like it.”

Zayn met Harry outside of his apartment since they had the day off--he called him when he got there like a real date and everything. Harry tripped out his front door, as he is prone to do, but caught himself before he actually face planted into the sidewalk. He hadn’t even had time to be embarrassed, instead focusing on Zayn leaning back against one of the light posts in a denim jacket with black leather sleeves and a Pink Floyd shirt. Harry still hasn’t quite gotten used to seeing him outside of the hospital with a hoop ring in his nose instead of a stud, rings on his fingers and his hair down around his face instead of pulled back.

They end up sitting outside at the restaurant once they find it; Zayn telling Harry to surprise him by ordering whatever he thinks looks good. Harry comes out with two waffles topped with mushrooms, spinach, peppers, tomatoes and marinated cheeses melted over the top. Zayn stares at him blankly.

“It’s not breakfast waffles?” He tilts his head, taking the forks out of Harry’s hand and his wallet from where he is biting it between his teeth.

“I guess not,” Harry shrugs, navigating his legs under the table. “It’s supposed to be savory, I guess? Then there’s like dessert ones too?”

“Are those questions?” Zayn laughs at the lift in Harry’s voice.

“I’m just as confused as you are,” he says pointing his fork at Zayn. “So shut up and try it.”

“At least you didn’t get a salad,” Zayn says cutting into the corner of a waffle. “I’m very proud of you.”

“I think I might be a healthy eating fraud. I just saw the dessert waffles they make in there and I’m about to eat all of them.”

Once they get over the idea that the waffle is savory rather than sweet, they eat the first two faster than they probably should, Zayn threatening to throw up more than once. They watch people walk past them on the sidewalk, admiring the eccentric tastes of the Portland locals; all of the rainbow tie-dye and plaid mixed in with high priced suits and shiny new Nikes and Adidas.

It doesn’t necessarily feel like a date besides that part about them being outside of the hospital. Harry has already spent so much time with Zayn it’s not so much a matter of getting to know each other as much as learning more. Like, how Zayn knew he wanted to be a doctor when he was a kid and used to “operate” on his older sister’s dolls.

“You like ripped their heads off or what?” Harry asks over a laugh. “That doesn’t make you special, I used to do that to Gemma’s dolls on the regular. Probably made me a candidate for mass murderer instead of medicine.”

“You are a menace, first of all.” Zayn points at him with his fork he’s spinning between his fingers, “And, no. I would, like, draw on them, kind of? Like, make incision lines and then draw across those to be stitches. It was all very abstract as you can imagine but I really thought I was being a doctor.”

“Drawing? You could have been an artist then?”

Zayn pauses and looks at Harry for a second, considering. “Don’t you think of surgery as an art?” Harry raises his eyebrows and Zayn pushes on, “Like you have to be just as careful and precise in all of your movements. And you have this room to constantly innovate or try new things or go back to the classic approaches.”

“Your brain is beautiful.” Harry laughs as soon as the words are out, mostly at how the tone of his voice makes him sound like an adoring teenager. “Sorry, I just, like, you see things differently. I don’t know,” he shakes his head, “I like it.” There are certain moments when Zayn turns shy and this is one of them, ducking his head down and drawing his finger across the lines on the table.

“Do you want to get the dessert waffles? I think we have to at least try one,” he says after a moment, looking up at Harry with a gleam in his eye.

“More eating? Always yes to more eating.”

Zayn goes inside to the counter this time coming back with a hot fudge sundae waffle and a caramel, granola, banana waffle that actually has Harry’s mouth watering just from glancing at it. They barely make it through half of each one, both talking with their mouths full about how good they are and Harry swearing the waffle at the base is melting on his tongue.

Harry’s the first to push his plate away, resting his hands over his stomach with a resigned sigh and a silent promise to never eat so much again. Zayn follows less than a minute later. They talk awhile longer before they clear their table and head back the way they came as the chill of the night truly rolls in.

“When was your first kiss?” Harry asks out of the blue when they’re paused at a cross walk.

“Hold on, babe.” Zayn leans over and runs his thumb against the corner of Harry’s mouth, catching a drop of hot fudge. He brings the finger back to his mouth, his tongue darting out to lick over the sauce. Harry blinks faster when he realizes he’s been staring.

The light changes as they make their way through the cross walk. “My first kiss with a girl was when I was eight and she pushed me down on the playground first,” Zayn says.

“Feisty, I like it,” Harry laughs. They turn down one of the side roads, away from the busy crossover of families heading home and people getting ready to go out.

“First real kiss with a girl was when I was fourteen and she smelled like oranges and tasted like chocolate, swear to you. First kissed a boy when I was seventeen and in high school. He tasted like he’d previously licked an ash tray.”

“What is this taste obsession?”

“I don’t know, honestly. Those were just two very distinct memories for me, I guess.”

“Yet you settled on the one that tasted like an ash tray?”

Zayn shrugs his shoulders, “Next one was better. Are you going to give me your kiss history?”

“First kiss with a girl was against a tree on the playground and I was eight as well,” Harry nudges him with his elbow, his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “It was rather hot when I think back now.”

“Steamy eight year old kisses?”

“No, like, I lived in Palm Springs. Literally hot.” Harry has to dodge away as Zayn tries to swat at him, running ahead a couple of steps and then slowing down so Zayn can catch up again.

“My first real kiss was from my first girlfriend, her name was Megan. I don’t know what she tasted like. The first boy I kissed was a senior in high school when I was a freshman and I don’t know his name.”

“Then why’d you kiss him?”

“We were at a party and he was in my math class. I walked up to him and I said, I really need to figure something out, can I kiss you?”

“And?” Zayn circles his hand to keep Harry talking.

“He said, yes, obviously. I wasn’t just giving out unsolicited tongue at age fourteen.”

“No, what were you testing?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to kiss him and I didn’t know how else to ask.”

Zayn stops walking, shakes his head then starts again. “Did you end up dating him?”

“No it was a one night stand consisting of a kiss.”

“Charming.”

They turn up onto one of the main roads and into a group of people spilling out of a patio bar. Harry reaches back for Zayn’s hand on instinct, only realizing the implication when Zayn grasps it firmly with his sending shivers up Harry’s spine. Way more than he ever felt when he kissed the kid from his math class.

“I feel like one of the essential parts of that story is how you were in a senior math class as a freshman,” Zayn says once they’re through the crowd and walking side by side, fingers linked.

“You caught that, huh?” Harry pushes his hair back with his free hand. “Math and science have just always made sense to me.” He looks over when Zayn squeezes his hand but Zayn just keep walking, a smile pulling at his lips and Harry has no idea why.

They make it another block before Zayn slows down. “Do you want to go get a drink, actually? I don’t think I’m ready to send you back home yet.” Harry answers him with a kiss against his lips, smiling as he pulls back.

“Cheers to your first assist surgery,” Harry says, lifting his beer and pressing it against Zayn’s whiskey coke. “That’s supposed to be the whole reason we’re out tonight. Well, and to celebrate the multi-tasking too.” Harry leans over to kiss him, lingering only a second before pulling back. There’s a chance he’s getting addicted to the buzz he gets with each kiss he gets from Zayn.

“Thanks. I would have gone out with you even if I hadn’t gotten the surgery, by the way.”

“Good,” Harry takes a sip of his beer rather than touch his lips that feel a bit warm from being pressed against Zayn’s. “Do you know when the actual procedure is?”

“Well, they want me to do an appendectomy, which no one plans for, obviously. So, I won’t know until the day of.”

“Less time to get nervous, I guess.”

“Something like that.”

Under the table Harry slides his feet on either side of one of Zayn’s shoes, lifting the toe of his boot to brush against his ankle. “Hey.”

“Yes?” Zayn swirls his straw in his cup, smirking across the table.

“Why’d you decide to,” he purses his lips, “to multi-task?”

Zayn let’s go of his straw and taps his fingers against the table. “The time I’m not with you I spend thinking about you.”

“Me?” Harry touches his chest, dimples on full display.

“Yeah, you and your dimples and your corny jokes and aggressive boy band moves and salad eating ways.”

“All part of my charm.” Harry laughs, running his fingers along the condensation on his glass, “I drew you in with the dimples, sealed the deal with the boy band moves.”

They head out when they both start yawning after one more drink each, holding hands as they walk back through the city. It’s come alive fully now, people running across streets haphazardly, laughter ricocheting off the buildings and sexy low bass thumps around nearly every corner. Harry offers to walk Zayn to his apartment but he waves away the offer since Harry’s is more on the way.

They stop in front of Harry’s door, the globe light overhead illuminating both of them. Harry slides his hands back into his pockets, biting his lip instead of asking Zayn to come inside.

“Hey,” Zayn takes a step closer to him so their toes are touching, Harry’s caramel colored boots against Zayn’s black DMs. “I really need to figure something out,” he smiles before he gets the rest out, “can I kiss you?”

Harry laughs, his eyes squeezing shut. “Am I not going to live that one down?”

“Don’t think so.” Zayn grabs onto Harry’s jacket, tugging him forward to close the space between them before tilting his head and kissing him, strong and steady. Harry moves a hand to Zayn’s lower back, pressing him forward as he tries to lick the whiskey from his mouth, tasting his tongue when Zayn opens his mouth to him. Zayn’s hooks his free fingers onto Harry’s belt loop on the side and something about the tug down causes Harry to make a sound low in his throat.

Zayn reacts with a smile, pressing harder against Harry until he’s back against the building and they’re deep in the shadows. His hand traces up under Harry’s shirt, resting just above the line of his briefs, the other hand holding his jaw steady. Harry lets him take control, opening his mouth for Zayn to taste, letting his eyes roll back when Zayn bites at his bottom lip. Harry makes a soft sound in his throat when Zayn moves his hand to drag his nails lightly over Harry’s skin.

“You taste so good,” Zayn whispers kissing along Harry’s jawline. Harry can’t function enough to do much else but swallow as Zayn’s lips trail down his neck with a hint of his tongue, his toes curling in his boots at the sensation. “Warm like hot fudge and sweet like a banana,” he whispers against Harry’s skin, intermixed with little bites and drags of his teeth and tongue, “a little salty.”

Harry rolls his hips forward, less of his own volition, and more because of the way Zayn traces under his ear with the tip of his tongue. “My favorite flavor,” he whispers right against the shell of Harry’s ear, his breath tickling against his skin. Harry drops his head back, Zayn smiling against his neck and making his way back to his lips, to press them together one more time, letting Harry drag his bottom lip through his teeth before he steps back. Zayn’s hand runs low against Harry’s back while the other traces the line of his cheek. Harry can’t help but shake his head at how turned on he is from being told he tastes like a dessert and pressed against a wall.

“You said I was the menace,” he says, kissing Zayn’s lips once, and trying to catch his breath. “But I think it’s you.”

“Guess you’ll have to wait and see,” Zayn says with a smug smile but Harry can see how blown his pupils are, how the hazel in them has been reduced to traces. He kisses Harry once more and runs his hands over the front of Harry’s stomach before he takes a step backwards towards the sidewalk. “I’m going to go home for now, though.”

“Will you text me when you get there?” Harry says following him into the light and taking out his own keys.

“Yeah.” He steps closer to kiss Harry again and then he’s backing away, running his tongue along his bottom lip. “I had fun, by the way. If there was a question.”

Harry grins at that, wanting to say something cheeky and landing on, “Me too. Like, a lot,” and meaning it instead.

*

As per most Mondays, Dr. Charles announces a schedule change first thing in the morning. Since they’ve experienced each specialty already their rotations will no longer circulate around their partners but with a chance to mix in with the rest of the class. There’s a low murmur in the group at breaking up the intern pairs that Dr. Charles squashes with an eye roll. Each intern pair will be assigned a patient to monitor from first consult to final surgery along with the rotating shifts. The question of who their patients will be lingers in the air but Dr. Charles hands out their new schedules without answering because of course she does. She congratulates Zayn on the way out and Harry bumps his arm rather than tackling him the way he wants to. He’s not sure about the hospital dating policies.

Harry and Zayn compare their new schedules over lunch, Harry’s lip curling at the lack of times their shifts actually overlap. He’s all for getting to know the other interns and constantly rotating services but the timing just seems a bit unfair. “Of course the week after you decide it’s acceptable for me to kiss the living daylights of you, they split us up.”

Zayn taps his toe against Harry’s anklebone to get him to look up from the papers spread on the table. “But we’ll get to follow an entire patient process, babe.”

“I hope we get something cool not just a shattered knee cap or something.”

“Same. But, regardless, it’s going to be a sick to be apart of the entire thing.” Harry swears Zayn’s eyes are glittering. “In the meantime, though, tell me more about kissing the daylights out of me, please.”

*

While they wait for their joint project patient to actually be announced, they work individual shifts and Harry decides it’s like living in the era of stolen romances as they share a quick kiss in the corner of the locker room when no one is looking or meaningful glances across meetings.

The Wednesday after they start individual rotations Zayn calls Harry while he’s walking home from his shift only to find Harry just getting out of the shower to head in to the hospital for his. The next day, though, Harry manages to surprise Zayn with sugar free cookies when they’re scheduled to work at the same time. Zayn pulls a face when Harry explains what key ingredient they don’t have and Harry has no choice but to grab his face and kiss the look right off of him. Then, a bit more until someone pushes the door to the locker room open.

“I thought you said you were a healthy eating fraud,” Zayn says, licking his bottom lip, inflamed red from where Harry bit it. Harry plucks one off of the plate and makes obnoxious moaning sounds while he eats it until Zayn raises his eyebrows and tells him not to start what he can’t finish. The giddy flirting and teasing of it all makes Harry grin and raises goose bumps along his arms for no reason other than it’s Zayn and he’s falling hard and fast.

-

Harry manages to call Niall to tell him about his progress with Zayn but he doesn’t quite get the response he’d been hoping for as Niall cackles across the line.

“He’s been in every story you’ve told me since you told me how pretty he was. I knew something was bound to happen.” Harry worries about how predictable he must be until Niall says, “I’m happy for you, H. You deserve something good.”

And Harry does, he decides while he’s texting Zayn one night and can’t get a smile to leave his face. He’s always been so busy to ever try and figure out how to make a relationship function, always finding it easier to stick with hook ups or focus on school and work instead. God knows why he’s decided the first year of his medical residency is the first time he’s ready to let himself have something real but he’s not planning to question it.

He ends up meeting with Zayn on the roof of the hospital a few times over the next week like a coming of age romance except for one of them usually being dead tired. One morning, Harry is laying his head in Zayn’s lap after he’s just finished an overnight shift. His heart had started doing a silly fluttery thing when he saw Zayn came in an hour early just to sit with him before his own shift started.

“I feel like I’m going to do that surgery soon,” Zayn says after Harry’s closed his eyes, sighing with his face pressed against Zayn’s stomach; Zayn leaning back against the brick barrier of one of the skylights.

“Why do you say that?” Harry moves his head back to look up at Zayn. “Are you a psychic?”

“No because I never saw you coming,” he says it with a sweet smile but he bounces his thighs at the same time and makes Harry’s head flop around until he slaps his stomach to make him stop. “I just have a feeling.”

Harry sits up, leaning back like Zayn, knowing he’ll fall asleep in Zayn’s lap if he gets half the chance. “Mm, well,” Harry reaches over and places his fingers against his chin with the lightest pressure until he turns towards him, “Whatever day it is you’ll be absolutely brilliant and they’ll kick the rest of us out of the program for not measuring up.” He kisses him then, moving his hand around to his neck as he deepens it just a bit, pulling away with a slow smile when their teeth gnash together on accident.

“You say I’m the inspirational speaker but you’ve got it made, babe,” Zayn says with a soft smile, the one Harry’s noticed he doesn’t give to everyone. Like maybe this side of Zayn is just for him.

“What time are you off?” Harry yawns and shakes his head as if that will stop the yawn in its tracks.

“Nine.” He traces under Harry’s eyes with his finger, the dark circles he’s accumulated from working since yesterday morning in the emergency room.

“I’ll come meet you and we’ll go get froyo.”

“Froyo?” Zayn’s eyebrows shoot up, “How very SoCal of you. And then, after, we can go golfing and live under a palm tree and do naked yoga.”

“You are a dick.” Harry punctuates each word by poking Zayn’s chest until he falls over, folding in on himself from laughter. Harry stands up and dusts himself off first, offering his hand to Zayn to pull him up.

His arms automatically fall to Harry’s hips, clasped around his back, “And you need to go to bed. Rest up for date number two.” Harry laughs as Zayn kisses him, twisting to bite his neck playfully before grabbing his hand as they walk back towards the door.

“I feel like we’re already past date number two.”

“We’re probably on date ninety-eight, at least. Especially if we count all of our lunches and dinners, the times I slept above you in the on-call room, the times we filled out paperwork, the hot and heavy day someone puked on you.”

“Oh, well, at least we’re well established, then.” Harry shrugs as they head down the stairs, Zayn lifting their clasped hands to kiss the back of Harry’s.

*

Their frozen yogurt date ends with Harry pinned against the back of the building with Zayn’s thigh pressing between his legs. Harry can’t find a single will to care that they are in a public alley as he takes to kissing along Zayn’s neck.

“We have to stop making out in public,” Zayn says, tilting his head to make room for Harry to trace designs with his tongue. Harry mumbles against his skin but he’s not even sure what he’s said because at the same time Zayn grinds his thigh up against him.

“Fuck,” his back curves off the wall and he lets Zayn pull at his lips with his teeth and gentle kisses, a combination that drives him wild. “No exhibitionism for you, then?” He manages to say when Zayn moves towards his jaw.

“Not at a frozen yogurt shop,” he laughs, one of his hands going under Harry’s sweatshirt to the heated skin of his back. “And I eventually want to get you,” he bites his jaw lightly, “Out of these tight jeans and it’s too cold to do it in an alleyway.” Zayn slipping his hand down the back of Harry’s jeans punctuates his last word. Harry’s hips buck forward and then still when Zayn laughs against his chest. “They’re so tight my hand won’t even fit.” Harry can feel him wiggle his fingers just under the waistband of his pants but he’d like to think it’s more his belt than his ass filling out his skinny jeans.

“You’ll have to take me on date number three, then,” Harry says with a practiced roll of his hips that makes Zayn stop laughing and kiss him again instead.

“Guess so,” he says with another soft kiss against Harry’s lips, tucking his hair back behind his ear. “You look wrecked.” Harry laughs and wiggles his nose and bats his eyes. “And I think it’s more that you’re going to get a cold being out here than any affect I have.”

“Possibly,” Harry says, sniffling a bit. Late September in Oregon is no time for making out outdoors. He grabs Zayn hand in his, though, and brings it down to the front of his pants, flattening his fingers. “But don’t go thinking it’s not you, too.”

There’s a low punch of air from Zayn as he curls his fingers against Harry through his jeans, pushing down just slightly in a way that has Harry whining high in his throat.

They kiss for a little while longer, laying off the hip grinding and curling fingers until they can control themselves enough to walk back down the alley with one last good night kiss.

*

Harry’s next shift is in orthopedics with Jason the intern from the bar with the peach farm. It turns out Jason is kind of an asshole when they aren’t sitting in a bar and he talks over Harry or nudges him out of the way when he wants to get something. The cherry on top, of course, is Harry finds himself back on rounds with his favorite sixteen year old soccer player with a shattered leg, Isabella.

“Oh, it’s you.” She looks up from a magazine when Harry walks into her room. Her leg isn’t attached to a huge contraption anymore but the sour look has yet to leave her face.

“Oh, it’s you,” he says in the same tone, wondering if this lives up to Zayn’s teenager sass-back standards. She doesn’t say much else as he checks the screws, already healing well and nearly ready for her to go to therapy. He tells her as much but she just blinks at him.

“Are you still a wannabe doctor?”

“Are you still a wannabe soccer player?” He grasps her foot after he says it to check one of the incisions when he hears a loud sob and his head snaps up. Her face is scrunched up as she makes these god-awful sounds that are echoing around the room. “Look, Isabella, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,” his hands flutter around not sure what to do, more than sure he’s overstepped the boundaries by making fun of a patient’s injuries. “Honestly it’s just that my friend or boyfriend, or friend, whatever, he said—“

“Did you say boyfriend?”

“Hey!” Harry points at her perfectly composed face as she tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. “What was that? All that?” He waves his hand around to somehow encapsulate the sobbing and the inhuman noises.

“Fake crying, don’t you know anything?” She shakes her head, her lips pursed, “Better luck next time.”

There are a few times in his life where he’s been utterly speechless and this is one of them. He doesn’t dignify her snark with a response, mostly because he doesn’t have one, as he turns on his heel and heads back into the hallway.

“Styles,” Dr. Jones waves him down after he updates Isabella’s patient file and puts it back into the active patient rack. “I have Jason down in the supply room sorting through our new shipment, can you help him?”

“Yeah of course,” he says, heading back the way he came. He walks slowly not in too much of a hurry to snuggle up in a supply closet with peach farm Jason who seems to have a stick up his butt more often than not.

“Hey, Harry, Harry!”

He stops in his tracks as Liam comes flying out of the elevator. “What’s up?” He puts his hands out to either brace Liam or protect himself from being flattened by him. “Did you run here? What’s going on?”  
Liam waves her hand around, speaking in gasps, “It’s Zayn. Zayn.”

“What?” There’s panic rising in his chest and it crosses into his words.

“Not bad,” Liam waves his hand, gulping for air. “His surgery,” he swallows, “His surgery is right now.”

“Fuck, what do you mean? How?”

“I’m assigned the gallery but then I figured you might want to see, too.” His breathing is almost back to normal but his face is rather pink.

“Shit.” Harry bites the inside of his cheek and checks his watch. “Shit. I just have to finish this supply closet thing do you think he’ll still be in there?”

“Maybe?” He smiles somewhat encouragingly, “They just admitted the guy so it might be a little bit before they actually start. But appendectomy’s aren’t typically that long.”

“Fuck. Shit. Okay.” He nods, “I’ll try to make it down there.”

“Do you want me to kiss him good luck for you?” Liam asks as he’s backing away and Harry’s jaw drops. He’s really not sure about the inter-co-worker dating policy; he hasn’t read a contract since he was eighteen at least. Liam grins putting a finger against his lips, “Your secret’s safe with me.”

Harry shakes his head at him, a smirk pulling at his lips as he backs up and heads for the supply room, ready to organize the supplies at lightening speed. He stops short in the doorway of the supply room when he sees Jason has dumped every box on the floor in a mish mash of individually wrapped medical supplies.

“What are you doing?” Harry’s eyes take in the mess as he tries to keep his breathing even.

“I dumped the boxes together, now I’m sorting all of the supplies into piles and then counting and shelving.” He says it without looking up and Harry’s eyes just about bug out of his head.

“Oh, wow, okay. Weren’t they already pre-separated in the boxes to start with?”

Jason looks up at Harry, blinking slowly like he’s dealing with a kid. “I think this is the fastest approach.”

Harry bites down on his back molars instead of launching into ten different other ways he would have handled the situation rather than a) dumping everything out and b) being an asshole. “Okay, well, I’ve been sent to help you.”

Jason doesn’t look up again.

Harry tries to move quickly, sorting through new gowns and scrubs, stacking boxes of dose cups and scooting boxes of office supplies around the room but progress is slow moving. It doesn’t help that Jason moves at a literal snail’s pace either. Harry has to count backwards from ten three times over at one point after Jason starts organizing trauma gowns in rainbow order, like it matters in an emergency what color they wear.

When they reemerge from the supply closet it looks pristine but Harry feels like an overworked maid. He leaves Jason behind to lock the door, filling his daily report out with something similar to scribbles and dashing towards the elevator, jamming the third floor button until the elevator buzzes in anger back at him.

Harry skids to a stop in front of the gallery board his heart swelling to see Charles/Malik written in even black pen on the board and scheduled for OR three. He walks calmly towards the door, not wanting to cause a scene or trip over something when he walks in. He doesn’t get the chance, though; he turns the knob and is met with immediate resistance. The gallery is already locked up. He peeks through the window at the top but the lights are all off. He’s missed it.

He trudges back towards the elevator and he hopes Zayn is still in the locker room. They can go somewhere for dinner and he’ll make Zayn recount each second of the procedure. Zayn’s as much of a surgery junkie as Harry is, he’ll gladly partake in a recap. Then maybe they can go back to Harry’s apartment and watch Netflix since he has to get up early in the morning. He stops short when he sees Liam and Louis leaning against the wall by the door, dressed in street clothes and clearly waiting for something.

“Hey,” Harry calls as soon as he’s close enough, nodding when Louis looks over his shoulder at him.

“Hey, man. So, uh, Zayn’s still in there.” Liam gestures his head back towards the door.

“Ah, yeah, I figured. Jason was being a bit of an ass earlier and taking days to organize so I didn’t make it down in time.”

Louis glances at Liam before his eyes settle on Harry’s. “Basically, the patient who was having the appendectomy, he was in his late eighties and he had a heart abnormality that wasn’t accounted for in his file.” Harry just nods along. “So no one could have known the stress of an appendectomy would cause him to go into cardiac arrest during surgery.”

He stops nodding. “Wait, the patient died in the surgery?”

Liam nods at the same time Louis says, “Yes.”

“There’s a one-percent chance, less than that, of a patient dying during an appendectomy.” Harry pulls at his ear and shifts on his feet, suddenly restless.

“Less than one percent chance of dying from the procedure itself not unforeseen pre-existing medical conditions,” Liam recites back to him and Harry groans.

“Fuck. Shit. Fuck. ” Harry pulls at his lip with his thumb and forefinger. “Was Zayn okay?”

“He didn’t say anything when he got out of the OR,” Louis says. “We just figured he could use a,” he pauses and raises his eyebrows, “a friend.”

Harry smiles at their thoughtfulness before narrowing his eyes at Liam. “I thought you said my secret was safe with you?”

Liam grins with, evidently, no fear of Harry’s teasing wrath. “Louis is my team partner. He’s an extension of me and he had to know. Not to mention you two are both of our best friends and—“

Harry cuts him off with a smirk, “Get out of here, both of you.”

They both laugh and move past Harry at once. “Send us a quick text when he’s okay. I cant imagine,” Louis shakes his head, “First ever surgery.”

“What did I say about not making it worse?” Liam whispers aggressively as they walk away.

Harry pushes into the locker room only slightly unsure of what he’ll find. If he knows Zayn at all, he definitely won’t be curled in a ball with tears in his eyes and Harry likes to figure he knows Zayn pretty damn well.

He immediately feels the lazy warm steam of the shower as he closes the door behind him and can only imagine just how hot of a shower Zayn’s taking. He wanders over towards their lockers, sees Zayn’s scrubs tossed in a pile in the corner, his locker wide open.

Harry undresses slowly, pulling on his jeans and shirt before grabbing Zayn’s scrubs and putting them in a bag with his. He zips up the bag and closes his locker, sitting down on the bench in the middle to wait. Eventually he hears the water shut off and it takes a couple more minutes before Zayn walks into the main area, his jeans low on his hips and a towel scrubbing over his hair.

“Hi,” Harry says, standing up when Zayn pulls the towel down from covering his face.

“Hey.” He walks a little closer to Harry, his eyes dark but not in the melty way Harry knows so well. The lines of his shoulders are tense, his hand fisted around the towel. He pauses right in front of Harry looking utterly exhausted, his skin red from his too hot shower, and the baby hairs near his ears curling out oddly. “Hey, come here.” Harry knows Zayn isn’t one to fall in his arms but as he reaches for him, sliding one arm low around his back and tugging him forward, he comes willingly.

Zayn relaxes almost as soon as their chests touch, his face tucked against Harry’s neck. Harry runs his hands up and down his warm back, tracing endless patterns as they stand there in the silence, muggy heat from the shower settling around them.

Zayn stands up straight after a moment but he doesn’t dislodge Harry’s hands from around his waist. “Fuck.” He says and the brevity of it almost makes Harry smile.

Harry pulls his hands up to hold Zayn’s face between his palms, “I know you don’t want to hear this right now but you are incredible and well on your way to being an amazing surgeon.” He seals his words with a kiss against each of Zayn’s eyelids and one against his lip before dropping his hands back to his waist.

Zayn half smiles and places a kiss against Harry’s jaw before resting his forehead against his shoulder. Harry can feel the tension rolling off of Zayn in waves but he also feels the way he relaxes against Harry and he isn’t planning to leave him alone. “What do you want to do? Are you hungry?”

“I need a drink.” Zayn says, standing back. He grabs Harry’s face and kisses him again. It’s hard and nearly biting as he licks into Harry’s mouth before pulling back, breathless. “I need to forget this fucking day.”

“We can do that,” Harry says smiling against his lips.

Belatedly, Harry realizes he should have taken Zayn to get food before drinks as he spins around on the bar stool with a sloppy smile and his third empty glass in font of him. Harry looks at a sticky menu sitting on the bar top and orders a greasy plate of fries and adds on a hot fudge sundae after Zayn realizes what he’s doing and starts looking at the menu too.

His eyes are lazy when he looks over at Harry after they order and he sets his elbows up on the bar. “Did you know there is less than a one percent chance of someone dying during an appendectomy?” His voice is light but it has a bitter undertone.

“I did, yeah.” Harry puts a hand on Zayn’s thigh mostly in blind hope it will keep him from falling over while he swivels his hips on the stool while he speaks.

“I’m like a snowflake,” he says with a shake of his head, his eyes squinting.

“You’ve lost me, babe.” Harry draws on his thigh with his finger.

“You know, snowflakes are all special and rare, right? My mom always tells me and my sisters we’re so special, snowflakes.” He’s kind of giggling manically as he says it and Harry braces himself for chaos. “Me, having my first solo surgery be in the category of appendectomy deaths makes me a surgical snowflake.” He tilts his empty glass and laughs when the ice falls against his top lip.

“You are the prettiest snowflake,” Harry laughs lightly along with him. Zayn isn’t stupid; he’s probably the smartest person in their class. So while Harry could wax poetic about his natural talent and the downfall of pre-existing conditions he knows that’s not what Zayn actually wants tonight. He needs to get his mind away from everything that happened which Harry converts into telling knock-knock jokes rapid fire style just to make him laugh even if it’s at Harry rather than the jokes.

“Let’s not talk about the hospital tonight.” He waves his hand when Zayn mentions something about replaying the procedure in his head, his eyes casting down. “Instead, let’s discuss who would be a better astronaut. I’m saying me because kids at school used to tell me I look like an alien so I could communicate with my people.”

Zayn gapes at him. “Babe, you don’t look like an alien.” He actually looks a little offended on Harry’s behalf even if he’s smirking into his hand. “ And, yeah, right, asthma prone astronauts floating through space because that’s likely.”

“Oh and you and your lungs could handle it so much better?” Harry purses his lips.

“If we’re talking technicalities, no one would survive in space with _just_ their lungs.”

“Did you miss the part about me being an alien?” Harry points at his face and he watches a smile bloom across Zayn’s face.

As soon as their food comes, Zayn alternates eating fries with bites of the sundae. Harry can’t drag his eyes away as he watches Zayn drip ice cream down his chin and the way his tongue wraps sinfully around each bite. Harry’s only had one beer compared to Zayn’s three whiskey sours but his vision is a little hazy from watching him. “Try,” Zayn says with another loose smile offering a spoon dripping half melted ice cream with half of fry nestled in the top. He bats Harry’s hand down when he reaches out for it and pushes the spoon towards his lips. Harry rolls his eyes but parts his lips anyway and offers his tongue. Zayn’s bites his lip as he slides the spoon in, pulling it back with dark eyes that make Harry want to drag him into a bathroom stall instead of eating hot fudge sundaes.

“S’good,” he says over a swallow grabbing another fry from the half empty plate.

Zayn nods his agreement before he leans towards Harry, balances a hand on his thigh and kisses him, licking into his mouth like he’s trying to taste him again. “Mm.” He presses his forehead against Harry’s, Zayn’s breath tickling his lips. “Hot fudge and Harry.” Harry can’t help but to kiss him again, leaning forward even after Zayn sits back up on his stool to chase his lips.

“Well, I’m drunk.” Zayn claps his hands together and does finger guns towards Harry.

Harry does it back towards him with his jaw dropped open and intermittent winks, snorting when Zayn mirrors him. He takes a bite of the last fry before giving Zayn the other half. He looks at his watch and winces when he see’s it’s nearly midnight. “Do you mind if we head out? I have the early shift tomorrow.”

“No, yeah, I need to go home too.” Zayn nods a couple of times before pushing up off the stool and only tilting a little towards Harry. He puts his arms out to balance himself, grasping Harry’s bicep and squeezing a couple of time before taking his hand back.

“I’ll walk you home.” Harry grabs his jacket as Zayn puts his on, his face looking more somber than it has since they first came in.

“You don’t have to, boo.” He drags _boo_ out to be two syllables instead of just one.

“Did you just call me boo?” Harry does a double take at Zayn settling his bag across his shoulders.

“You my boo, baby.” Zayn croons it at Harry, biting his lip at the end.

“Okay. I’ll be your boo.” Harry twists their fingers together as they head out of the bar, “Wow, that didn’t sound nearly as cool coming from me.”

“My alien boo,” Zayn says full on laughing as they hit the sidewalk, pulling up their hands to kiss the back of Harry’s.

Even drunk, Zayn has a better sense of direction than Harry, directing them back to his apartment seamlessly. Harry walks him inside, Zayn resting a hand against the elevator wall and keeping his eyes closed. Harry’s never seen him this drunk but Zayn controls it well. Surprise, surprise.

“This is me,” he says when they stop outside of his door in the hallway.

“Okay,” Harry nods, a little unsure about just inviting himself in. “How are you feeling?”

Zayn tips the side his head against the doorframe and rests it there. “I am,” he purses his lips, considering. “I am disappointed and I am exhausted.” Harry doesn’t hesitate this time, reaching forward and pulling him against his body, kissing his hair as he sighs against his neck. “I also can’t feel my lips anymore,” Zayn tilts his head back pouting his lips and opening and closing his mouth like a fish. “So can you get my keys?”

“Yeah, I can do that.” Harry fishes his keys out of his bag fitting them in the lock and twisting it.

“Welcome to my mansion.” Zayn smiles as they walk in but Harry can see the exhaustion wearing on him in the same way the alcohol has.

“It’s a very simplistic vision,” Harry says with a smirk.

“I’ve heard you have a similar situation.” He smiles again, slipping his jacket off and hanging it on the hook. Zayn’s place is a studio with a kitchen off to the side, a couch and a coffee table separated from the bed by a huge bookshelf acting as a wall. The bookshelf is made of large squares; some shoved full of books and other random stack of stuff but it leaves the whole space feeling rather open. Harry likes it right away.

Zayn sits in the middle of the floor to take off his black boots. Harry watches him but he hadn’t really thought past walking Zayn home. He pats at his pockets for his phone and the next thing he knows Zayn is standing in front of him. “Stay with me.” He kisses his jaw, the smell of body wash and alcohol rolling off of him, and turns away like he hasn’t just read Harry’s mind.

“You sure?” Harry calls after him as he disappears over to where the bed sits, pulling his shirt over his head.

“Duh, alien boo baby,” he calls back. Harry can almost hear his smile. “You’re not walking home alone, I don’t want your people to abduct you.” Then he hears a door shut and water running from a faucet.

Harry’s quiet laugh echoes off of the walls as he slides his bag off of his shoulder. He grabs Zayn’s shoes from the center of the floor and toes off his boots, lining both pairs up by the door. In the kitchen he gets a glass of water and the little bottle of aspirin out of the cupboard. He looks at the intricate drawings hanging on the fridge and the spices he’s never heard of lining the counter.

He can hear Zayn moving around in the bathroom still so he snoops more, opening the fridge and a few more cupboards. He’s not even sure what he’s looking for just that he wants to know more about Zayn. Like, where he sits to eat dinner, if his mom gave the spices to him in those little containers when he moved out, if he knows how to cook with them. He makes sure to lock the front door before he grabs the pills and water.

Zayn is lying flat on his back on his mattress and he tilts his head up when Harry walks over. He takes the things from Harry’s hands and takes a few sips of watering before setting it down. “I’m going to shower,” Harry says, leaning forward and placing a soft kiss against Zayn’s lips, the taste of whiskey lingering between them. “That okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course.” Zayn slides down underneath the covers, the joking demeanor from the bar settling further into the disappointment from the hallway.

In the shower Harry uses Zayn’s soap, the sugary scent that’s becoming as familiar as Zayn. He wraps the towel low on his waist when he goes back in the room and sees Zayn curled up where he left him, shoulders rising and falling gently. Harry grabs a pair of flannel pants out of a pile on the floor of the closet and pulls them on before turning off the light and darkening the entire apartment at once.

He glances at the window, bathing the room in soft light from one of the streetlights outside. He pulls back the covers and slides in between the cool sheets, adjusting the pillow under his head before looking over at Zayn. He looks so peaceful with his eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks. Harry tries to be gentle when he reaches over to push his hair back a little and smooth over his forehead with his thumb. He wants to tell Zayn it could have been anyone in that OR tonight and nothing would be different but he knows Zayn already understands; he knows Zayn just needed a night to decompress, a night to not be alone.

Zayn doesn’t open his eyes at Harry’s touch but he scoots closer until they’re pressed together in the center of the mattress and he can press his face against Harry’s chest. Harry rolls onto his back and Zayn moves with him settling an arm around his waist. He turns his face towards one of the birds inked on Harry’s chest and presses a soft kiss against his skin.

“Thank you.” Harry’s not sure if Zayn says it at all, the whisper of the words against his skin; either way he tightens his arm around him, holding him tight against his chest until his breathing evens out and he falls asleep.

*

“You look exhausted.” Jason and Harry are filling out medical progress reports at the main desk the next morning when he says it. Harry swears the new pairing system is broken because he ended up back with Jason for a second shift.

“Comes with the job, I would assume.” Harry doesn’t look up just flips the page to the next side. He’s not exhausted is the thing. He may have gotten one less hour of sleep than usual but it was one of the most restful nights he’s had in awhile. Something about having Zayn wrapped around him all night settled him and when his alarm went off his only regret was having to roll out of Zayn’s arms to go to work. Now, of course, he’s got Jason telling him he looks exhausted and he’s on the verge of telling him he’s the one causing exhaustion deep in Harry very bones. Fitting since they’re still in the orthopedic wing again, the one with the very organized supply room.

“Hey, there’s Zayn.” Harry whips around so quickly he nearly sends the papers flying off the counter. Sure enough, Zayn is walking towards Harry in a pair of loose jeans and a black hoodie looking soft, if not a bit tired, with a coffee in his hand.

“Hey, J, how’s it going?” Zayn nods his head at him.

“Good.” Jason says and Harry tries not to roll his eyes.

“Hey, you,” Zayn says when he’s right in front of Harry, the nose scrunching smile breaking out across his face. Harry shifts his shoulders to face away from Jason, asking Zayn how he feels. “Pretty good, actually. Someone left me some water and aspirin when they left this morning.”

Harry grins at him. “Did they? That is so nice.”

Zayn just rolls his eyes and offers Harry the coffee in his hand. “This is to say thanks for last night. I,” he bites his lip over a pause, “I just really appreciate it.”

Harry glances towards Jason, suddenly hyperaware of how close he’s standing to them. He takes a few steps away from the counter, Zayn following him easily. “Of course,” Harry says softly, “Anytime.” He looks out of the corner of his eye to see Jason doing a terrible job at pretending to write on his reports. Zayn smirks when his eyes focus back on him and he knows he’s seen it too. “Thanks for the coffee, it’s like you can read my mind.”

“I was worried I kept you up,” he reaches forward like he’s going to touch Harry’s face but pushes his hand back through his own hair instead.

“Not at all,” Harry shakes his head quickly. “I just wanted to make sure you were going to be okay. Not like, mentally okay, or something like that. Just, like, feeling happy, you know?” Harry wants to shove the words back in his mouth; unsure how to explain he didn’t mind any part of last night without making it sound like he thought Zayn was mentally unstable.

Zayn nods, speaking softly. It’s less like he’s worried about an audience listening in and more like he’s being utterly sincere. “Obviously I’m still frustrated about everything that happened. But without you I probably would have gone home and torn myself apart for it. Even though I know I can’t control what happened in there and that I can’t change it, I just know myself and--” he shakes his head, “That’s what I mean when I say thanks. Not just for letting me get drunk and eat hot fudge sundaes but for taking my mind off of everything. It just meant a lot. Basically that is what I am saying.” He finishes with a half smirk across his lips and Harry wants to kiss him.

All he can think of is pushing him against the desk in the middle of the room and kissing the lights out of him. Tell him with his lips and his tongue and whispered words how much it means to Harry that he’s willing to try, to let Harry be the one to take his mind off it; to be there for Harry in different ways that mean just as much. Instead, he settles for smiling softly and whispering, “You have no idea what you’re doing to me.”

“I have an idea,” Zayn says on a bit of a laugh. “You’re just as guilty of it.”

“Harry, can you help me, please?” Jason’s irritated voice floats over to them and it takes a second for Harry to remember he’s the one Jason is talking to.

“Shit, yeah, sorry.” He automatically feels guilty for slouching off to the side with Zayn while on his shift. “Sorry,” he says it to Zayn this time pulling at the front of his scrubs.

“No, no, you’re good, babe. I have to go anyway but I’ll see you tonight? I’m on call but I don’t have a shift. So call me when you’re off and come over or something.”

“Yeah, okay.” Harry smiles at him as he picks his pen back up and twirls it around a bit with his fingers. He feels giddy, a complete turn from his mood ten minutes ago. Just as Zayn’s turning away Harry’s pager goes off and he’s abandoning his medical reports all together, sprinting down the hallway with Jason on his heels.

When they break for dinner Harry’s not sure how much more of Jason he can take; Jason tried to demonstrate the correct way to use the date stamp Harry’s been using since day one in the hospital. He just about grabbed it and stamped his forehead instead. He takes his salad up to the roof, sitting underneath the overhang as a light rain falls outside of the cover. He thinks it’s funny how he comes up to the roof with Zayn under clear skies and the second he comes alone the sky decides to split open.

He uses the time to call his mom and then Niall who asks him why he’s calling from the shower. “This is rain, Ni. Rain drops coming out of the sky.” Harry holds the phone away from his ear so Niall can hear it better.

“Alright you dick, don’t act like I don’t know what rain is,” Niall grumbles when Harry brings the phone back to his ear, giggling and putting his forehead against his knees. He lets Niall ramble on about school and the plumbing in his new building. Harry tells him about how they’re going to get to monitor one patient through their entire surgical process.

When they hang up he goes back inside with a resigned sigh, recycling his salad container and making his way back to the locker room to put his phone away. He checks it one last time before he gets back seeing a text from Zayn that says he’s already gotten called in for his shift and he’s on his way to the hospital. Without the promise of seeing Zayn after his shift, Harry drags his feet all the way to the orhto wing.

*

Harry ends up in general surgery the next day with Riley, mostly taking patient samples to the labs to be tested and running random errands for the older residents and surgeons. The end of his shift overlaps with the beginning of Zayn’s so he doesn’t plan on seeing him, yet again.

Once his shift is over Harry is heading to the locker room when Louis slams into his side along with an intense sensation of altered déjà vu. Harry’s arm wraps around Louis as he takes two steps to the side to correct their momentum. He counts it as an accomplishment considering he’s supposed to be the clumsy one out of everyone he knows.

“Zayn’s in surgery,” Louis says as soon as they’re upright.

“What? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“No and I’m supposed to be back in the ER but I figured I should tell you.” Louis is running towards the back stairs the next moment. Harry’s pretty sure he should get Liam and Louis both a card for their dedication to his and Zayn’s relationship that neither have them have even explicitly told them about.

He heads up to the galleries unsure if he’ll go in to see Zayn’s procedure or not. Part of him is surprised they put Zayn on another case within forty-eight hours of the failed procedure; part of him knows that’s exactly the kind of teaching Dr. Charles likes most. There was hardly any time for Zayn to psych himself out over the last one before he goes again just like a full-time surgeon. Harry checks the whiteboard outside of the galleries and sees Zayn is operating with Dr. Charles again, on an appendectomy, again. If he’s not mistaken it’s in the same OR as well. He bites down on a smirk.

He walks up to the gallery door but this time he doesn’t reach for the handle. If something goes wrong, he’s not sure he can watch. He paces back and forth in front of the door and counts thirteen rounds of passing the door before he just opens it and goes in. If he doesn’t believe in Zayn enough to watch him, then what’s to say the universe won’t take his side too. He doesn’t even have the energy to roll his eyes at himself.

There are only a few other people in the gallery, nurses, and a couple of doctors but nearly all of the seats are empty. Harry scoots to the third row, the furthest back. He knows if Zayn looked up he would only see tinted glass and blurry images but Harry really isn’t trying to risk it.

He has to sit up straight to see onto the floor and sure enough he can see Zayn across from Dr. Charles and the anesthesiologist sitting near the head of the patient. There are a couple of nurses scattered around but it’s such a routine procedure there isn’t a huge team assembled. He watches with his lip caught between his teeth as Zayn hands Dr. Charles different instruments and almost starts bouncing his knee when Zayn is the one to extract the appendix, setting it in the metal tray held to his side by a nurse. He watches Dr. Charles nod at him and though he can’t hear anything going on, he feels just as in on the action.

When they go to do the final sutures, Harry’s fingers twitch against his thighs. As excited as he is for Zayn, as proud, he can’t wait to get in the OR himself. There’s an itch under his skin to be in the action for real and he knows it won’t be long until they all get their turn. Then, once they’ve all had a chance, they’ll be in surgeries regularly.

The energy of the thought courses through him only to be brought back as Zayn disappears into the scrub room. He’s done. The patient is being cleaned up and sent back to her room and Zayn did everything right. Harry dashes out the gallery door almost immediately.

He takes the stairs two at a time down to the OR hallway looking both ways for Zayn.

“Hey, babe.” Zayn comes out the door behind him and Harry crosses the floor to him, his lips sliding into a grin he can’t stop. “How’d you know I was down here?” 

Harry just grabs his hand and tugs him towards the closest on-call room, pulling him inside.

“Louis told me,” he says, locking the door behind Zayn, smiling when his eyebrows shoot up. “And then I watched you and I’ve never seen anything as fucking hot as you extracting an appendix.”

Zayn hums as Harry crowds him back against the wall, “That’s a kink I’ve never heard of.”

“Really?” Harry tilts his head, “I’m sure it has to exist.” He doesn’t give Zayn a chance to answer, setting his hands flat on either side of his head and leaning in to kiss him. He moves his lips slow but when Zayn grabs his hips and tugs him closer it turns a different direction quickly. Harry holds Zayn’s jaw steady in his hand as he kisses him, tongue tracing his teeth and biting on his bottom lip just to punch out a whine from deep in his chest.

“I’m so fucking proud of you,” Harry whispers against his neck, tracing the strong muscles and careful pulse points with his tongue. Zayn tips his head to the side to give Harry better access, his hands sliding down the back of Harry’s scrubs to rest on his ass. He squeezes both hands and drags Harry’s hips even closer as Harry muffles a moan into his shoulder, bites at his collarbone. Harry can feel how hard Zayn is as Zayn pulls their hips together again; it sends white dots in his field of vision.

“I want to suck you off,” he lifts his face to whisper it right against Zayn’s ear, Zayn’s answering groan sending shivers up Harry’s back. “Can I, Z? Right now?”

“Shit,” Zayn drops his head back as Harry runs his hands down his sides and drops to his knees in front of him. Harry sits back on his heels tracing lines up and down the front of Zayn’s scrubs with the tips of his fingers as Zayn tries to catch his breath. “Fuck, babe. Please.” He strips off his scrub top and tosses it over the railing of one of the bunk beds.

Harry’s eyes go wide at all of Zayn’s top half bare in front of him, free to be touched. He knows now is not the time to explore when someone could knock at any moment and he only regrets his impatience of shoving Zayn in an on-call room momentarily.

He scoots in a little closer and sits up on his knees, runs his tongue over the _don’t think I won’t_ scrawled on Zayn’s hip and grips the waistband of his scrubs between his fingers. His lips and tongue chase the fabric as he pulls them halfway down Zayn’s thighs, just enough for his cock to slide out of his boxers, hard with pulsing veins up the sides. Harry swears his mouth waters. He pumps his hand up Zayn’s length a couple of times, swiping his thumb over a pearl of precome and sucking it into his mouth, grinning against Zayn’s hip when he let’s out a strangled moan into the fist over his mouth.

Harry presses his hips back to the wall at the same time he sinks his mouth down against Zayn. He takes as much as he can, his nose brushing Zayn’s skin until he feels his throat pulsing before he slides up, twirls his tongue and sinks down again. Zayn curses softly from above him, hips jerking forward. Harry feels one of Zayn’s hands twisting in the loose strands of his bun, the other going to the side of his face, his thumb running a line across his cheek. When Harry looks up under his lashes, Zayn is looking down at him, something fond in his eyes and Harry groans around his mouthful.

“You’re lips are going to kill me, wrapped around me like this,” Zayn murmurs as Harry moves his face forward again. “Like you were made for it, love.” Harry starts moving quicker; quietly moaning each time Zayn tugs on his hair or whispers something sweet. “I’m close, babe. Not gonna last.” Zayn’s words come out tight and in a panic. Harry has to let go of his hip to palm himself through his scrubs, needing some relief.

He looks up at Zayn again; blinking fast over the full feeling but without pulling off and Zayn must get the idea, nodding quickly. Harry suctions his lips tight sliding his mouth up and down until Zayn comes with a groan muffled against his forearm, dick pulsing between Harry’s lips. Harry pulls off when Zayn whines at the sensation, sitting back on his haunches. Before he can process shoving his hand down his pants to finish himself off, Zayn is kneeling in front of him, licking the taste of himself off of Harry’s tongue.

“I’ve got you,” he whispers, running his hand over the front of Harry’s bulge before sliding his hand in his boxers and gripping his length with a strong hand. “Got you,” he whispers again as his hand pulls Harry slick and tight, using the wetness at Harry’s tip to slide. Harry can only focus on kissing him for so long before he presses his face to Zayn’s shoulder and bites a tattoo he can’t quite see as he comes, Zayn’s hand slowing to get him all the way through it. They both breathe against each other until Zayn pulls his hand out of Harry’s pants and wipes the mess against his thigh.

“Oh, that’s lovely, thanks,” Harry says when he realizes what Zayn’s done, kissing him quickly again despite it.

“Your shift is over, yeah?” Zayn says, giggling a bit and moving to bite Harry’s neck lightly before sitting back too.

“Yes, me and my come pants are off duty.”

“Well, me and my clean pants are still on the clock.” Zayn shrugs and jolts when Harry pinches his nipple.

“Blow jobs are so not allowed on the clock.”

“Probably not. I had a twenty-minute break to use though.” Zayn tugs a few paper towels from the dispenser on the wall, using one for his hand and giving the rest to Harry to wipe the come off his pants. He’s pretty sure he just smudges it in deeper.

“Always one for the rules,” Harry says. He wipes his hand over his mouth watching while Zayn pulls his shirt back on. Harry stands up careful not to let his pants touch the floors or the walls purely for sanitary purposes.

“Are you leaving?” Zayn wraps his arm low around Harry’s waist to pull him close and kisses his jaw.

“Well, yeah.” Harry laughs and tucks a stray hair behind Zayn’s ear. “I only stayed because you were in a surgery. Did I mention how proud I am of you?”

“Think you might have,” Zayn kisses him once slower, pressing their bodies together again. “Go to my place.”

“Right now?” Harry pulls back, his eyebrows pulling together.

“Yeah, I mean, if you want to. Personally, I want nothing more than to get in one these tiny bunk beds and lay with you so if you’re already in my bed when I get home.” He puts his hands out like he’s weighing the options. “Plus we have the day off tomorrow and I want to be with you.”

“Technically your apartment is closer than mine, so I guess I can do that.” Harry turns to unlock the door with a long-suffering sigh but Zayn pinches his butt and makes him jump with a squawk.

Harry has to use Google Maps to get to Zayn’s apartment again though as he gets closer he starts to recognize the other buildings. He has his scrubs in his bag and he dumps them in Zayn’s washing machine almost as soon as he gets inside. He showers again with Zayn’s sugary body wash and wanders around his apartment touching absolutely everything while he waits for his hair to dry.

He looks at the things Zayn has tacked on his walls, little drawings, pictures of girls who have his features and medical articles he clearly ripped out of journals. Harry can’t help but murmur “dork” into the empty apartment nor can he help the small smile on his face when he says it. He gets caught up at looking at the bookshelf and the classic lit Zayn has mixed in with his crime novels and one romance novel. Then, he walks around the kitchen but his exploration is short lived with his own sleepiness coming back after the adrenaline rush of being at the hospital the last couple of hours.

He moves his scrubs to the dryer and turns out all of the lights, pulling on the same pair of flannel plants he wore two nights ago that are folded on the side table near Zayn’s bed. He smiles to himself when he switches the pillows so he can have the one that smells the most like Zayn, eyes heavy as he drifts.

He’s not sure what time it is when Zayn gets home, he barely opens his eyes as he hears him showering and heating up something in the microwave. Eventually Zayn crawls into bed beside him, pressing up against Harry’s back and wrapping his arm tightly around him with his palm resting just over Harry’s heart. The last thing he feels is the soft drag of Zayn’s lips over the back of his shoulder before he drops back to sleep.

For the second time in as many mornings that he’s been at Zayn’s, Harry wakes up first. Zayn’s arm is a little looser around him, down by his waist and he can feel his even breathing against his shoulder blades. He checks his phone and his eyes go wide at the early time, especially on his day off. He drops his head back on the pillow, setting his hand over Zayn’s on his belly and squeezing his eyes shut in an attempt to go back to sleep. He decides it’s time to get up when he finds himself reciting the surgical steps for a tumor removal. He feels like something out of a Bond movie as he slides out from underneath Zayn’s arm without waking him, rolling off of the bed and onto the floor. He only realizes it was in vain after he stubs his toe against the bathroom door and Zayn doesn’t even flinch, his face pressed against Harry’s pillow.

He gets his notecards and his latest shift reports from his bag before sitting on the carpet with his back pressed against the edge of the couch while he writes new cards to add to his pile. At last count he had over three hundred terms and procedures and they haven’t even made it halfway through the year. He jumps when Zayn comes around the bookshelf awhile later, looking sleep rumpled in his boxers. He waves vaguely before disappearing in the bathroom only to come out looking quite the same a couple minutes later.

“Morning.” His voice is raspy as he bends over Harry, tugging his hair back gently to press a kiss to his lips when his head falls back.

“Morning,” Harry says against his lips, kissing him once more before looking back down at the card he’s writing on. Zayn lays on the couch behind him, wrapping an arm around Harry’s chest and resting his chin on his shoulder, watching him quietly for a couple of minutes. “Having fun?” Harry asks when Zayn starts tracing the birdcage tattoo on his side with his finger.

“I’m trying to figure out why we’re up so early on our day off, actually.” Zayn kisses the top of his shoulder before settling his chin again.

“Not on purpose, trust me.” Harry clicks the pen and sets it down on the carpet with a yawn.

“I have an idea.” Zayn turns his face to Harry’s neck, his words tickling his skin, “We should go to that famous pink donut place, I bet it’s on the big adventure list, and then we should get back in my bed and start House of Cards because I haven’t watched it and I feel like I’m missing out on something important.”

Harry twists his neck until his face matches up with Zayn’s. “Yes, please,” he says against his lips, punctuating each word with a kiss.

Barely an hour later they’re back in Zayn’s bed in their boxers eating donuts covered in fruit loops and white frosting from Voodoo Doughnuts with a cream filled option called ‘cock and balls’ waiting in Zayn’s kitchen for later.

“I used your washing machine last night,” Harry says, licking some of the glaze off his bottom lip.

“Okay.”

“I just wanted you to know. This is all much more domestic than I’m used to. Not to mention I never, ever used my last boyfriend’s washing machine.”

“Am I your current boyfriend, then?” Zayn raises one eyebrow and puts another piece of his donut in his mouth.

“Is this the thing where you’re trying to freak me out? Like when I asked you out on a date?” Harry narrows his eyes at him, “I’m not falling for it.” Zayn’s only response is to shrug his shoulders and keep chewing, his face unfairly blank. “So, yes, I am referring to you as my boyfriend. Ha.” Harry pauses in the silence between them. “Or, I mean, if you want, like,” he stutters over the last bit.

“I just wanted you to be the one to say it.” Zayn laughs and puts the rest of the donut between his lips, clearly pleased with himself.

“I’m not scared of it,” Harry says easily. “Boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend.”

Zayn rolls his eyes when Harry sticks his tongue out at the end of his chant. “As for the domesticity, I guess that’s what we get for having jobs that don’t have normal hours and deciding to date someone who works the same inane hours,” he says.

“Screw candlelight and sensual seduction, eh?” Harry bites his lips, “We have laundry machines and flash cards.”

“Don’t forget blood, guts and puke.”

“Modern romance.”

“Oh, so that’s what this is?” Zayn nods knowingly before dusting off his hands and pouncing on Harry, pressing him back against the sheets and attaching their lips.

They spend the next nearly hour exploring each other’s bodies under the pretense of learning each other’s tattoos with tongues and gentle fingers. Asking questions about where each one came from and cackling over their drunken ink stories in between the more meaningful pieces. Still, the heat of it all goes straight to their cocks and Zayn jerks them off together, their breath mixing in pants and low groans before come spills wet and hot over their bellies and they collapse in a sticky mess.

“Do you want to go into cardio?” Zayn asks, after they’ve recovered, with his chin on Harry’s chest. He traces the anatomical heart on the inside of Harry’s bicep.

“I think I might,” Harry lifts his neck to watch Zayn’s steady finger, “But I got that as more a heart on my sleeve thing than like, look at me, I want to operate on hearts.”

Zayn laughs at that and the air from his mouth gets Harry’s nipple to pebble. Harry doesn’t even have the time to process his sensitivity before Zayn’s mouth is on him again and Harry’s head falls back against the pillows with a choked off moan.

They take a shower around lunch, somehow ending with Zayn on his knees and Harry’s cock halfway down his throat, before they make it back to the bed to actually start watching a show. Zayn sets his computer up on his thighs. Harry tucks himself against his chest pressing kisses to the bites he’d left over the tattoos across his sternum; including one he is quite proud of, a purpling mark over the lipstick stain between the wings.

“Your curls are blinding me,” Zayn pats at his fluffy hair, arranging the pillow under his neck so he can see, kissing the back of Harry’s head when he finally settles. “What should we watch? I think House of Cards but you can pick.”

“Grey’s Anatomy.” Harry’s lips twitch as Zayn groans. “I’m kidding, you big baby.” Harry slaps his stomach lightly and Zayn pretends to throw up on him. All in all it’s kind of perfect.

*

There are three days in a row the next week where they both have perfectly opposite schedules, which might have been ironically funny if it didn’t limit the time they were coherent enough to see each other.

On the second day of the three, Harry comes in to the hospital when Zayn is getting ready to leave. He has to stifle a laugh into his fist when he spots him coming out of the resident’s hallway towards the lobby. Zayn has his hood up as he drags his feet, his eyes barely open. When he sees Harry near the front door the corners of his lips quirk up as he redirects his path towards him.

“Don’t you laugh at me,” he mumbles when he’s got his arms around Harry’s waist and his chin on his shoulder.

“I would never.” Harry says easily, pressing his lips to Zayn’s forehead where his hood has slipped and wrapping his arms tightly around him. He honestly feels bad for Zayn; he’d worked a full shift the day before and then actually got called in for an overnight shift in the emergency room. “Don’t fall asleep, babe,” Harry whispers as he rocks back and forth on his feet, pretty sure he’s not helping the “don’t fall asleep” campaign.

“I’m not,” Zayn says but he doesn’t make to move his head. It seems like a crime as Harry pushes him back and stands him up straight but he laughs when Zayn pouts at him. He does his best to tease a smile out of him with his lips before sending him

back out the doors and towards his own bed just as the sun is rising over the city.

Most days where they work standard shifts they don’t have much more energy than to get to Zayn’s apartment by nine or ten at night and watch Netflix or attempt to cook something with one of the recipes Zayn’s mom sends him. They’ve been trying to marathon House of Cards though Zayn has become notorious for falling asleep in the middle of episodes.

“You’d think this would get boring,” Harry says as Zayn unlocks his door one Tuesday night, “Frozen yogurt and Netflix but I look forward to this part of the night all day.”

Zayn snorts as Harry follows him in the front door and locks it behind them. “We spend all day running around taking care of people or getting bodily fluids on us, babe. I think it’s safe to say Netflix and frozen yogurt is our safe haven.”

“No more bodily fluids then?” Harry puts the two containers of yogurt in the freezer, better plans unfolding in his mind.

“Hm?” Zayn hooks his keys up next to the refrigerator and turns towards him.

“I said,” Harry bites his lip and backs Zayn up against the counter, “You don’t want any more bodily fluids today, then?” He runs his nose over Zayn’s jaw and grinds his hips forward yelping helplessly when Zayn pinches his nipple and pokes his belly simultaneously.

“You’re disgusting,” he says as Harry backs away.

“You like it, you like it,” Harry chants pulling his shirt over his head and tossing it somewhere behind him.

“Mm,” Zayn slides his hands around Harry’s waist and pushes his hands in the back of Harry’s sweatpants to squeeze him closer. He sends goose bumps up Harry’s arms and back when he whispers against his ear, “I really, really do.”

They rarely sleep at Harry’s because of his bed situation, which appalls Zayn the first time Harry shows him after one of their overlapping shifts.

“Here it is.” Harry let’s go of Zayn’s hand to unlock his front door, pushing it open with his knees and wiggling his fingers out in front of him for added effect. Zayn just nudges Harry further forward before following after him. Harry closes the door and stands back as Zayn looks around. Harry tries to follow his gaze and see what he’s seeing though he’s not sure it works, considering there’s not much to look at.

“You weren’t lying about the bean bag.” Zayn grins as he crosses the room plopping down on it. The apartment is a lot like Zayn’s in more ways than one but Zayn making himself comfortable in the first two minutes loosens a knot of tension Harry hadn’t anticipated.

“In hindsight a couch might have been a better option,” Harry says as he sets his keys on the counter. He holds onto the edge while he takes his boots off, lining them up over by the door.

“Oh, Harry.” His head snaps up at the teasing tone of Zayn’s voice but he’s already up off the beanbag and crossing the room. “Oh, babe. Forego the couch and the bean bag and don’t buy a twin size mattress.”

Harry puts his hands on his hips as Zayn crawls up on his unmade bed. “Hey, it was cheaper. And I really was planning to get a bed frame. I just forgot.”

“Cheaper by ten dollars?” Zayn rolls his eyes and starfishes out on the mattress, “I’m shorter than you and my feet are about to hang off the end.”

“Okay, no, they’re not.” Harry walks over laughing and points at Zayn’s feet situated comfortably on the mattress. Zayn stretches his body and Harry’s eyes roam appreciatively forgetting the point all together.

“Can two people even fit on it?”

“Is that a come on?” Harry asks kneeling on the bed and crawling up next to Zayn.

“Did it work?” Zayn laughs, kissing his nose before sitting up, “Babe, look at your feet. They definitely aren’t on the bed.”

Harry wiggles his toes; well aware they aren’t on the mattress. “I usually sleep in a ball not like a dead body.”

“Oh, nice imagery.” Zayn tweaks Harry’s nipple through his shirt before crawling up on top of him so their chests are pressed together. “This seems to work better. Stacked.”

“Stacked,” Harry laughs with his head thrown back, Zayn holding onto his shoulders like he’s scared he’s going to get thrown off.

“Hey,” Zayn says when Harry looks back at him.

“Hi.” Harry lifts his neck but Zayn meets him halfway, bringing their lips together and chasing Harry’s lips when he lies back against the pillow.

They still spend lazy nights lying around on Harry’s floor discussing hospital politics or random things like who out of the two of them would survive on a deserted island (They go back and forth before mutually deciding on Zayn when he points out Harry would freak the fuck out and exert all of his energy in the first two minutes while Zayn would at least take times to think things through). They drink their way through bottles of wine and trade off between cooking for each other and ordering take out. Harry attempts to use his secret recipes from the bakery until Zayn puts a ban on him before he gives them both heart attacks from triple dark chocolate cookies and lemon scones three times a week.

Liam and Louis join them every once in awhile, gladly partaking in drinking wine and moaning about shifts at the hospital. The loneliness Harry had been so scared of after that first month slowly trickles away as the four of them become their own little group, staying up until the early hours talking and playing games—creating a relationship outside of the bleak hospital walls.

One night Liam tries to teach them how to play old card games while Louis complains about leaving his Xbox with his roommates when he moved to Portland. Zayn and Liam lament the loss by chugging wine and though Harry can’t play video games to save his life, he chugs some wine too. Later, after Louis and Liam give up on learning the rules to Scotch Bridge, Zayn pulls Harry against his chest and tells him he’s his sunshine with wine stained lips. Harry believes him when he kisses him back with matching purple lips, he really does.

*

Almost a month after Dr. Charles promises them patients to monitor they get their assignments. Harry and Zayn get placed in pediatrics with Dr. Garcia who takes them to meet their patient and sit in on the initial consult right away. Harry and Zayn can’t stop grinning at each other behind her back finally starting to feel like they’re doing something big in the hospital.

The smiles fade quickly as they’re led into the patient’s rooms and they see the patient for the first time. Jaxson is eight and has spent more than half of his life in and out of hospitals with a brain tumor that had been deemed inoperable, Dr. Garcia explains as Harry and Zayn take notes. His parents sit in two chairs near the edge of his bed and they look tired. Not the kind of tired that can be cured with a full night of sleep.

Harry gets distracted watching Jax for a moment. He has thick-rimmed glasses to help him see since one of the tumors presses on part of his eye and makes it hard for him to. His brown hair is messy and sticking up at odd angles as he messes with the gown in his lap, the one he hasn’t put on yet. He grins when he sees Harry watching him and Harry makes a shocked face when he sees his two front teeth missing. Jax ducks his head.

Dr. Garcia uses a brain scan from last year to point at the different points of the tumor and Harry takes his attention away from Jax to focus where she has them pinned on the light board. On first glance, Harry sees why the original diagnosis had been made; the tumor is seemingly everywhere in the scan. He glances over to see the unease in Zayn’s face too and he knows he’s thinking along the same lines. How they are possibly going to operate on a terminal case. Dr. Garcia shoots Harry and Zayn a hard glance like she might be reading their minds. She takes out a neon pen as she highlights where her and the neuro specialist would potentially make cuts. Jax’s parents are nodding along in the corner like Dr. Garcia is reading them a passage from the bible.

“We have to get another scan before we’ll know for sure how we want to proceed,” she says turning off the screen and facing the parents. “If we all agree to continue, he will undergo three separate surgeries each roughly two weeks a part. We’ll monitor his brain activity in between as opposed to taking out the entire thing and risking detrimental effects.” She fields some questions from the parents before she excuses herself and Harry and Zayn to the hallway.

She asks them if they have any questions and Zayn’s the one to verbalize before Harry can. “What made an inoperable tumor change to operable?”

Harry knows by now a sigh before a sentence never bodes well and he holds his breath when Dr. Garcia’s sighs this time. “Jax’s tumor is still a high risk procedure. If we can get the entire thing out, he’ll live a healthy and full life. If we get none of it out, he most likely won’t live until Christmas. This is his last chance.” Zayn nods and Harry sees when he bites the inside of his cheek.

“And if we only get parts?” Harry asks. He already hates this case; he knows he’ll get too attached to the things medicine can’t change.

“The way we mapped it each part we extract will get him a month at least. The more parts the better, obviously.” She looks back and forth between their faces, “We really are planning to get the entire thing out as dangerous as it is. Right now, Jax can’t see without his glasses, his speech is already impaired and if we don’t start a treatment plan, he’ll lose control of his arms and his legs before his brain stops sending signals and his organs begin to fail.” Harry only hates the case more the unease of impossibility curling in his stomach.

Dr. Garcia sends them to take Jax for a new brain scan while she has the parents come to her office for a meeting. Harry knows this is the part they talk about things like death when the under age patient won’t be able to hear it and he’s more than happy to take Jax away from that.

“Hey, Jax,” Zayn says as soon as they’re back in the room. “I’m Zayn, this weirdo is Harry.” Harry tries not to look scandalized by Zayn’s words. “We’re going to take you down for your brain scan. Is that cool?”

Jax nods and Zayn picks up his gown from his lap. It’s one of the plain blue ones, a standard not usually seen in pediatrics. They always have colorful gowns with designs on them. Zayn balls the material in his hand, “J, what’s your favorite color?”

“Um,” he closes his eyes while he thinks and Harry smirks. He starts to fill out the paperwork to request the scan. “Red. Like a fire engine.” He points at the one on the side of his Velcro shoes.

“Sweet. Wait right here, okay?” Zayn puts a finger up before he runs out of the room and Harry grins; he knows exactly where he’s going.

“I noticed you lost your two front teeth,” Harry says as he takes Jax’s blood pressure.

“A couple of days ago.” Jax grins proudly and pushes his tongue through the gap. His words are slow and slightly slurred

“Both at the same time? “ Harry gasps, “No way.”

Jax laughs and launches into the story of how it happened and how his dad offered to tie them to a door and slam it to get him out. It’s the same thing Harry’s mom used to tell him. When he finishes Zayn is back with a bright red gown printed in fire trucks and Dalmatian dogs that Jax gets all excited over, clapping his hands even. Zayn helps him into it, tying it in the back while Harry helps him under the thin sheet on the bed.

Jax tenses up as they get in the extra large elevator to get him to the floor with the scanning equipment, his hands curling around the edge of the sheet. “Jax, you should tell Zayn about losing your teeth,” Harry nudges his head towards Zayn.

“You lost all your teeth?” Zayn leans over the bed to see into Jax’s mouth, making him open wide and prove he is only missing the front two and not all of his teeth. By the time Zayn’s satisfied they’re outside of their assigned room with the technician waiting inside.

Harry explains the scanning process to Jax even as he nods along because this is definitely not his first time getting a brain scan. Harry goes back into the control room with the technician while Zayn goes with Jax into the actual room to get him settled in the machine with a second technician.

The control room is made of glass plates so Harry can see when Zayn lifts Jax onto the flat, sliding part of the machine. Zayn grabs the sheet off of the bed from Jax’s room and spreads it over him, tucking it in tight around the sides.

“Can he take his glasses off, please?” The technician next to Harry leans over to speak into the mic and the second technician gives her a thumb up.

“He can’t see at all if we take these,” Zayn says as the technician reaches for them but he doesn’t seem to hear him nor care. Harry rolls his eyes but Zayn controls himself better slipping the glasses in his pocket and leans over Jax so he’ll be able to make out his face at least. Harry can just barely hear him through the speaker. “Remember what Harry said about taking a little nap in there and we laughed at him?” Harry’s cheeks turn pink as Zayn glances back towards the control room.

“Yes,” Jax whispers, his hands tight on the edge of the blanket again.

“That might actually be a good idea, okay? And make sure to stay stiff as a board so you only have to do this once?” Zayn’s voice is different talking to Jax, not like he’s talking to a kid, necessarily but softer than usual. The technician puts the squeeze ball in Jax’s hand, explaining how he should only squeeze it if he really needs the machine to stop scanning. “Are you going to be all right, buddy?” Zayn leans over again as the technician turns the machine on, a soft whirring coming into the room where Harry is. Harry watches as Jax nods but Zayn must see something else. “I’ll stay in here until you’re done, okay?” Jax pats his hand against the bed before reaching for Zayn’s. It’s singlehandedly one of the sweetest things Harry has ever seen.

“You can’t hold his hand,” the technician next to Harry says into the microphone and Harry wants to hip check her.

Zayn doesn’t flinch at her words just keeps speaking to Jax even as the flat part starts to slide into the machine. “Bud, I’m going to hold your ankle okay? Promise I won’t tickle your feet.”

The scan takes nearly an hour to get the full angles Dr. Garcia ordered. Zayn doesn’t move his hand once and Harry swears something in his chest breaks then, something he won’t be able to fix again. Especially after Jax slides out of the machine and Zayn puts his glasses on him before he gives him a high five and one of his eye crinkling grins. Nope, Harry is so fucked.

Later, Harry has to press Zayn against his door as soon as it closes and use his hands and tongue to try and begin to show just how into the soft side of Zayn he really is. After Zayn comes down his throat and gets Harry off on the floor in the kitchen they lay in a messy heap tracing over each other’s skin aimlessly. “What’s going on, boo?”

Harry grins at Zayn’s ridiculous nickname he’s decided to keep for him. Harry only allows it because Zayn draws out the syllables into more of a coo than a serious thing. “Nothing.” Harry presses his lips to Zayn’s chest before settling the side of his head over his heart.

“Don’t think so. You just traced the zap tattoo like six-hundred times in a row.”

Harry lifts his head just to frown at Zayn and say, “That’s a bit dramatic”, before laying back down. “I was just thinking about dating a co-worker and if that might cause problems or something. Like, when I want to jump your bones because you’re being all protective over a little boy and things.” He doesn’t add in the other times he wants to jump on Zayn, like when he speaks in long drawn out medical terminology or when he answers questions correctly on rounds, not to mention when he’s in the actual operating room.

Zayn tangles his fingers in Harry’s hair and the pull is so sweet Harry has to close his eyes. “Remember when I said I read our entire contract?”

“To see if you could keep smoking, you filthy animal.” Harry kisses his chest again even as he says it.

“Yeah, well, I happened to still have the file on my computer and I may have read it again.”

Harry starts smiling slowly, “And?”

“There’s not one word about co-worker relations besides notification of marriage. Other than that, it’s free range.”

“Free range?” Harry gets up so his hands are on either side of Zayn’s shoulders and he’s straddling is hips, “Free range for dating and licking and kissing?”

“And blowing and touching,” Zayn says with a grin that has Harry laughing against his neck before working his way back to get his lips on Zayn’s smiling mouth.

*

The treatment plan with Jax is pretty simple once the scans come back and his parents decide to move forward. He gets to go home until his first surgery after Halloween and Harry and Zayn go back to rotating shifts until he comes back.

Harry gets off just before dinner from one of their separate shifts and he’s surprised to see Zayn sitting on one of the benches out front of the hospital. It’s one of the crisp and cold days Harry’s starting to love mostly because the notorious Pacific Northwest rain stays away.

“Hi,” Harry says with a smile that dimples his cheek. Zayn stands up off the bench tugging his beanie a little lower. “This is a surprise.”

Zayn kisses him once, humming against his lips, and then twice more like he can’t help it before taking Harry’s hand in his. “You know how you always find places for us to try?”

He rubs his thumb over the inked cross on Harry’s hand as they start walking. “Yes,” Harry says slowly.

“I was thinking—“

“Uh-oh.”

Zayn knocks his hip against Harry’s, shushing him. “I did a little bit of research and I found a place for us to go.”

There’s something so stupid about the swoop low in Harry’s stomach. The feeling he suddenly gets just because Zayn thought of a place for them to try. “Oh, did you?” Harry bites his lip over the grin spreading quickly across his face.

“Yep. It reminds me of a place I used to go as a kid in the city. My dad would take the girls and me. It’s a restaurant where they specialize in making South Asian street cart food.”

“Sounds perfect.” So perfect that Harry has to stop them on the next corner just to kiss Zayn and watch the warmth in his eyes come to life as he does.

Harry finds a table while Zayn orders for them coming back with a sheepish smile as he sits down next to him. “I might have just ordered one of everything on the menu,” he says, taking the glass of water Harry pours him.

“Good because I’m starving,” Harry says before he launches into the story of the heart transplant he was assigned for his shift. He got to go to Seattle in the helicopter with the surgeon to oversee the retrieval of the heart and hold it in the cooler on the thirty-minute flight back. Zayn reacts exactly the way Harry anticipated, wide-eyed and full of questions about the actual harvesting process and how much Harry got to see.

Their food arrives as Harry is giving a graphic description about a blood vessel bursting during the operation and the waitress casts them both sidelong glances as she sets their plates down. Harry puts his hand over his mouth as she wanders away, stifling his laugh. Zayn just pulls his hand away and kisses him gently, laughing against his lips.

“She probably thinks we’re harvesting organs for the black market or something,” Harry says when he pulls back.

“Or trying to make her customers throw up and lose their appetite. Oops.” Zayn laughs as he rearranges the plates on the table and tells Harry what each one is.

There are lamb samosas and curry and paneer makhani, and chicken tikka masala because Zayn says he couldn’t possibly only pick one. When it comes down to it Harry’s favorite is one of the sides, a yogurt, cucumber, cilantro combination that has him licking the bowl when he’s finished.

“Wait, so did the patient survive?” Zayn asks when he’s dragging a flat piece of bread through the remnants on one of the plates.

“Heart transplant guy?” Harry sets the raita bowl back on the table, thoroughly licked. “Yeah, he’s good to go. I got to go with the surgeon and tell his daughter and she hugged both of us. If only she knew how important my job was.”

“You held the cooler, babe,” Zayn pokes his dimple, “That’s vital.”

“I don’t know what I would do without your support,” Harry says dreamily, batting his eyelashes.

Back at Zayn’s, Harry showers and pulls on a pair of boxers from his bag while simultaneously trying to towel dry his hair into a more manageable tangle of curls for the morning. He’s taken to keeping extra clothes in his workbag for the nights he stays at Zayn’s though he’s become a master in the skill of stealing clothes from Zayn too.

Zayn is pacing around the main room on the phone with one of his sisters so Harry crawls between the sheets and scrolls through Instagram listening to Zayn recount stories about work and he gets a warm feeling in his chest when he hears his name mentioned.

He comes back into the room with his sweatpants low on his hips. Harry drops his phone off the edge of the bed and puts his hands behind his head, eyes scanning Zayn shamelessly. The only light in the room is the shadow of the street light from the window but it’s more than enough to see Zayn as he walks across the floor.

“How’s the family?” Harry asks.

“Good. Busy but all good.” He climbs on the bed, one knee over each of Harry’s hips.

“Heard you talking about me,” Harry can barely keep the smirk off his face. Zayn doesn’t say anything else just leans forward to kiss him then, his lips turning from soft to demanding as Harry parts his lips further, let’s Zayn’s tongue in, hums over the taste.

It doesn’t take long before Harry finds himself pinned under Zayn, his wrists pressed above him on the bed as Zayn grinds his hips down over him. The sweet friction is what makes Harry whine out loud throwing his head back against the sheets as his hips push up.

“You gonna come like this, babe?” Zayn whispers against his neck, his teeth pulling at the sensitive skin. “Don’t even have to touch you? Hm?” Harry’s eyes roll back in his head and he can hardly find words above one syllable “uhn” sounds. “So sensitive for me,” Zayn whispers against him, moving down his chest and tracing shapes with his tongue.

Harry pries his eyes open to watch Zayn’s back move, his hands letting go of Harry’s wrists to skitter lightly down his sides. Zayn tugs his boxers off with his teeth and sits back to watch Harry, biting his lip between his teeth. “Touch me, you boob,” Harry says, gyrating his hips up against nothing.

“Boob?” Zayn ducks forward and licks his nipple, makes Harry’s back curve when he skims his teeth along his skin too. “Very articulate, baby.”

He plans to say something snappy back but then Zayn’s working to take his cock in his mouth and Harry’s lost all words. Zayn twists one hand along his base and uses his other hand to trace along the leaves tattooed on his hips. Harry’s hips buck each time Zayn pulls off of him to bite into his thighs, leaving red and purple traces of where his lips and teeth have been.

Harry’s not sure how he does it, makes him come a part like this. Where his whole body feels like a live wire from the second Zayn touches him, like the swipe of his tongue or the way he groans when Harry lifts his hips up, might just make him explode.

Zayn sits up with a pop, a string of saliva still connecting his lips to Harry’s dick that makes him laugh, a wrecked giggle spilling over his lips. It gets an eye roll out of Zayn as he wipes at his mouth and then comes back to Harry’s lips. He kisses him hard, his teeth pulling at Harry’s lips only hard enough for him to make sounds low in his throat especially when Zayn grinds down on him again.

“Turn over for me, babe,” Zayn whispers against Harry’s jaw. He flips over so fast he almost kicks Zayn with a gangly leg. Zayn laughs as he grabs hold of his ankle to keep him from flying all over.

Harry’s laugh dies in his throat, turns into a heady kind of moan he didn’t know he had in him when Zayn pulls his hips up and kisses the dimples in the bottom of his back. Harry falls to his forearms when he feels Zayn dragging his fingernails up over the back of his thighs and his mouth moving lower. He bites into Harry’s right cheek and he keens over the shock of the slap that comes after then the soft kiss on his heated skin.

He feels when Zayn’s fingers pull him apart with his thumbs. Harry scrambles to hold on the sheets under him as his hips press back when Zayn’s tongue and warm breathe brushes over his hole. Zayn uses his tongue to get him wet, tight circles and broad strokes that have Harry biting into the pillow under his head to try and drown out the sounds he can’t keep in.

He pulls himself back to his hands and knees as Zayn starts working his fingers into him slowly. Zayn whispers filthy words against his hip and kisses his skin until he can scissor two fingers together while Harry is sweating and writhing underneath him. Harry isn’t sure if it’s just Zayn or the fact he’s training to become a surgeon but each curl of his fingers strikes white hot in his belly, his back arching.

“You’re amazing,” Zayn whispers against his back. He lands a sharp slap to Harry’s skin with his free hand and Harry can feel a bubble of precome blurt out. Harry manages to turn his head to look behind him to watch him. Zayn’s face is pink and his lips are wet from tasting but he has a smirk over his features, eyes heavy as they flick between watching Harry’s face and his own hand. Harry suddenly feels an overwhelming sensation in his stomach all the way to his chest and it’s not just his impending orgasm. The word is on the tip of his tongue; the one he never wanted to say when someone had his fingers inside him but right now it feels like he might just scream it out.

Instead, he bites his cheek and blinks slowly at Zayn, pressing his face back to the pillow when Zayn reaches under him for his cock, stroking him quickly compared to his fingers and licking against the skin in the middle of Harry’s back. Harry’s toes curl as he comes, his mouth dropped open in a silent scream as Zayn works him through it until Harry collapses flat.

He pulls his fingers out of him to scratch gently at the back of his thighs and up over his ass. It’s calming, Harry decides, even though he’s sprawled on the bed and still trying to remember his own name. Zayn crawls up his back to kiss his cheek and pushes his hair away from his face.

“You’re gonna make it so I have to shower again.”

“Poor you,” Zayn says with another kiss against his eyebrow, his own dick rubbing against Harry as he shifts.

“Poor me,” Harry says turning over and capturing Zayn’s lips then pressing him backwards so his head is at the end of the bed. He kisses down his jaw and to his neck, making quick work down to his stomach. “And poor you.”

“Me?” Zayn lifts his head as Harry pulls down his boxers.

“I’m about to suck your soul through your dick.” Harry tries to keep his face even as Zayn raises his eyebrow at him but the laugh bubbles out of him as he smiles against Zayn’s hips. “No but really,” he says when he’s a little calmer, gripping Zayn’s dick and kissing the tip. “Just you wait.”

*

Louis has his first solo procedure a couple of days later and he trips over his feet coming into the cafeteria to tell the rest of them about it. Liam did his already--he went second, right after Zayn--and they both lean forward to hear Louis recount each moment of the procedure.

Harry’s smile is genuine as he listens to Louis but there’s still anxiety curling in his stomach while he waits for his turn. Dr. Charles has reassured them multiple times it’s only a matter of scheduling and the nature of the emergencies that determine who gets to operate and at what times. She also guilt trips them all by telling them not to wish emergency surgeries on any patient.

Harry starts to zone out for the ending of Louis’ story imagining never getting to do a solo operation just watching the rest of his intern class move forward as he keeps ordering tests and organizing supply rooms. Zayn must know what he’s thinking when he glances over at him, the way he always does. And when he puts his hand on Harry’s thigh under the table with a slight squeeze it’s just enough to tell him so.

Harry’s first surgery ends up coming by the end of that very week, the day before Halloween, and he doesn’t even get a chance to tell anyone. He’s just finished cleaning a two-day-old surgical wound of the natural pus buildup when his pager vibrates against his hip. He snaps off his gloves into the hazard bin and salutes his patient, a sixty-five year old man with the sense of humor of a piece of bark dust before he jogs down the hallway towards the OR.

“Styles, you ready to operate?” Dr. Charles points at him and then goes straight into the sanitizing room for OR three and he has no other choice, really, but to go after her.

“Right now?” His fingers tap erratically against his thighs while Dr. Charles finishes applying soap up her arms and turning on the water with her foot and putting her hands under.

“Right now, Dr. Styles.” She says the last part with a knowing smile, like she might remember the feeling before a first solo assist in the operating room.

“Okay, sweet, cool.” He tries not to wince as each word comes out of his mouth making him sound like he just got asked out on a date. “What’s the procedure?”

“We’re doing a nephrectomy to prepare for an organ donation. You know it?”

Harry wants to punch his fist in the air considering he’d just been looking at the kidney removal procedure in his flash cards last night after watching it live last week. Instead, he nods.

“Good. Give me two potential risks of the procedure.”

Harry pours the soap over his forearms, scrubbing it into his skin. “Injury to other organs or structures, kidney failure from the single remaining kidney.”

“The procedure will be laparoscopic,” she says letting her foot off of the water pedal and letting Harry take her place. The hot water burns only slightly now that he’s used to it but he barely feels anything this time, his toes scrunching in his shoes in excitement. “Are you comfortable with that?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“See you in there, then.” She turns for a nurse to roll on her gloves and tie a mask around her mouth. Then, she’s pushing through the door and into the other room leaving Harry to wash his hands. He finishes and takes three deep breaths before he puts on the plastic gloves as well and let’s a nurse tie a mask over his mouth.

Through the door, the room is the same as always with the patient in the middle and Dr. Charles standing on the right side of the bed. The anesthesiologist sits up by the patient’s head and three nurses stand near their feet and off the side. Harry stands across from Dr. Charles and gives her thumbs up when she asks if he’s ready.

She talks as much as usual, explaining what she’s doing to prep the area. But when she hands him the scalpel for the initial incisions, he’s in unchartered territory. He stills his hand before he takes the tool and follows her instructions on where to make each incision.

“Good.” She moves on to inserting the probes with the tiny camera on the end, asking Harry to periodically make cuts in the muscle and fat around the organ, looking up at the screen next to them to help them navigate.

In the moment he doesn’t consider the fact he’s doing surgery or get a wave of adrenaline like he’d been scared of having to deal with. He concentrates on navigating the tissues and listening to Dr. Charles as she explains what to do and where. She has him place the bag around the kidney before extraction and he bites his lip as he does it, hyperaware of the organ being donated and any mistakes being detrimental to a life somewhere else outside of the operating room. He makes the final cut on the ureter before the kidney comes out through the largest incision, immediately taken by the nurses to be prepared for transport.

“Shoot.” Dr. Charles hitches her hip up towards a nurse as her pager goes off, “Is this a 911?” The nurse lifts her scrubs and reads the little screen, nodding and reading off the code flashing. “You okay to close, Styles?”

He doesn’t hesitate this time either, “Yes, ma’am.” She nods and heads out leaving him with an open patient and a room of expectant nurses and an older resident watching from the corner. “Okay. Let’s do this.” The stitches are like any others he does in the emergency room or down in the clinic so any nerves don’t have the chance to get the best of him.

A senior nurse checks his work once he cuts the final stitch, approving with a simple tilt of her head and a smile covered by her mask but he sees her cheekbones shift upwards. “All right. Go ahead and take the patient to recovery, I think we’re done here.” He feels like a terrible cliché saying the words Dr. Charles always says at the end but what he wants to do is run in a circle so he thinks this will have to suffice.

Zayn never talked about his surgery, either of them, storing the details away in his mind to process on his own while Harry always thought he’d be the one to scream from the rooftops about his first surgery. Once he’s out in the hallway, though, he feels a strange sense of calm. There’s a late and dull rush of adrenaline under his skin that makes him jump as high as he can to touch the ceiling but the relief at being free to do more surgeries lingers there too.

In the locker room Harry puts his green sweatshirt on backwards with the hood in his face and he manages to laugh out loud in the quiet room as he turns it the right way. He startles when he hears someone sliding on the bench behind him but he grins when he turns back to see Zayn sitting there. Sometimes he still catches Harry off guard when he’s not in his scrubs, in black jeans and a white shirt with his black leather jacket. Just on the sexy side of dangerous.

“Hi,” Harry straightens his sweatshirt as he leans forward to kiss Zayn, a soft press of his lips that makes him smile. “I did it.” It’s got to be a testament to Harry talking endlessly about the surgery and Zayn knowing him better than anyone else to understand exactly what he’s talking about.

Zayn bites his lip over a grin that spreads across his face. “Told you.” Zayn was the one who told him over and over it would come when he least expected it. Of course he’d been right. Harry smirks and leans forward to kiss him again. He starts laughing when Zayn whines as he pulls away. “Come here, you.” Zayn tugs him back in by the edge of his sweatshirt, twisting his other hand in Harry’s hair as he kisses him deeper, Zayn’s tongue dragging along his bottom lip before letting him turn back to get the rest of his stuff together.

“What are you doing tonight?” Harry stills as Zayn touches the skin on the back of his hip where his sweatshirt is rucked up. He runs his fingers over the small strip sending chills up Harry’s back.

“Although I would love to run around the streets screaming about being a real life surgeon, I have laundry and I fell asleep trying to study last night. So, that.”

Zayn pulls the sweatshirt back down, standing up when Harry turns back towards him. “You can study at my place, if you want?” Harry scratches at his jaw trying to remember how many pairs of unstained scrubs he has left. Zayn slides his own bag over his shoulder. “I can bribe you, if you need me to.”

“Yeah?” Harry raises an eyebrow even though he knows he’s going to be easy for it. He’s just remembered the extra pair of scrubs he has at Zayn’s plus when Zayn gets like this, he’s always easy for it.

Zayn nods and puts his hands under the hem of Harry’s sweatshirt so his thumbs rest just on top of his waistband. “Yeah,” he says followed by a kiss to the corner of Harry’s lips. “We can get Chinese take-out from Lucky Star on the corner,” he trails a kiss down from the first, “I just bought new notecards,” he pulls back to look in Harry’s eyes, “The mega pack was on sale. I have multi-colored highlighters my mom sent me too.” Harry’s already smiling but Zayn goes back to his jaw, kissing along his skin, “And we can sleep on my queen bed instead of your tiny one.” He laughs at the last part before kissing Harry’s lips fully, brushing his thumbs over his hipbones. “Not to mention I’ll be there too, to celebrate you being a real life surgeon.”

Harry pretends to consider before kissing Zayn, one more time, quick. “Sounds perfect.”

“Knew I had you wrapped around my finger,” he laughs as he squeezes at the soft part of Harry’s hips and drops his hands.

They walk to Zayn’s apartment, hand in hand, knocking hips more out of clumsiness from Harry than any type of romance. It starts raining after they get take out at Lucky Star but there’s only a couple of blocks to the complex after that so they let the rain splatter on their clothes. Harry thinks Zayn looks the best he’s ever seen him, wet and in leather, and he tells him so against the wall in the stairwell before they get to Zayn’s door.

Zayn gives Harry a pair of sweats to put on instead of his jeans once they’re inside. Harry pulls them on and hangs his pants over the railing in the bathroom. He comes back out with the sweats hiked up high on his waist, and he does a kick routine in the middle of the floor until Zayn is laughing so hard he’s curling into himself, begging Harry to stop.

They spread out the food down the middle of the floor with their notes and files piled in front of them as they settle into comfortable silence. Harry feels more relaxed than he has in days as they start in on their shared, mega pile of blank note cards, multi-colored highlighters scattered across the floor.

Long after the food is gone, Harry is lying on his back on the couch flipping note cards in front of his face and trying to memorize neuro techniques with Zayn stretched out on the floor highlighting and flipping pages back and forth. Harry likes the way his tongue slides between his lips when he writes and when he twists around on the floor to stretch and when he scratches his back so his shirt rides up and the strong flex of the muscles in his neck when he rolls his head in a circle.

Harry sits up suddenly. “Did you ever do that thing in school where you were like studying cards or something and then someone asks what you’re studying and you say, ‘human anatomy’ and then they’re like,” he drops his voice low and bats his eyelashes, “’Let me study _your_ anatomy, baby,’?”

Zayn stares at him and blinks once before laughter bursts across his features, his eyes turning into half moons. “No, I can’t say that’s ever happened to me. You? Wild med school dreams come to life?”  He sits up with his legs out in front of him, resting back on his hands.

“Yeah, right. More like wet dreams. I used to stay up half the night studying and then getting up at the crack of dawn to get to the bakery. Any sex I had was in a bar bathroom and that’s only if I didn’t fall asleep during, which actually happened if I was pushed against a wall for too long.”

“Stop it, you’re turning me on,” Zayn laughs again from the floor flipping a highlighter in the air and catching it. Harry flips him the bird falling back on the couch and holding his cards back in front of his face.

His eyes blur over his own writing and he squeals when Zayn crawls on top of him, legs on either side of his body, settling low over his hips.Zayn grabs Harry’s notecards and sets them on the coffee table, making sure they don’t scatter and stay separated from the other piles of paper. The small gesture makes Harry’s stomach flip and it takes everything in him not to roll his eyes at himself.

“Let me,” Zayn smirks putting his hands flat on Harry’s chest, his voice low, “Study your anatomy, baby.” Harry’s head falls back, his eyes squeezing shut as he laughs. When he tilts his head back up, Zayn is right in front of his, biting his lip.

“Seriously, though,” Zayn smirks. And then, “What’s this?” He runs his pointer finger lightly over Harry’s brow bone and it makes him swallow hard.

“Supraorbital ridge,” Harry says closing his eyes when Zayn drags his finger slowly down the side of his face landing on the top of his cheekbone. “And this?”

“Zygomatic arch.”

Zayn makes a low acknowledging sound before he presses his lips to the spot just below his fingers. He drags his finger down to Harry’s jaw, shifting so his thumb can run along it. “What’s this?”

“Mandible.” Zayn kisses that too, three in a row before dragging his teeth light back up lightly.

“That was good studying.” Harry smiles, resting his hands flat on Zayn’s thighs.

“Oh, we’re not done.” Zayn rolls his eyes running his hands up and down Harry’s chest. He puts his hands up under the hem of his t-shirt and starts pushing it up his stomach until it’s rucked up under his arms. His eyes trace slowly over Harry’s inked stomach as Harry tries to control his breathing. There’s something about having Zayn’s eyes focus so fully on him that sometimes makes him feel like he needs to roll away.

Zayn must notice the nervous look in his eyes because he shifts forward to kiss his lips, biting gently at his bottom lip as he pulls away. He smiles softly at Harry, running his fingertips up and down his sides. “What are these?” He runs his hands over the two swallows on Harry’s chest, the curve of the bone.

“Clavicle, sternum in between,” Harry says raising his eyebrows and trying not laugh, beating Zayn at his own game--or at least trying.

“Mm,” Zayn lets him have it this time, leaning forward and dragging his tongue over the birds. He shifts his hips down to take his tongue lower. The wet heat of his mouth makes Harry adjust on the couch slightly and he closes his eyes when he feels Zayn’s breath right over his nipple.“What’s this babe?”

His breath sends goose bumps over Harry’s skin, his nipples automatically rising. “Sternum, already said it.” He doesn’t open his eyes as he says it but they fly open when he feels Zayn sit up.

“Wrong.” He purses his lips when Harry’s eyebrows pull together.  Harry takes one hand off Zayn’s thigh and touches the center of his chest, mumbling the names out loud.

“Sternum, yes it is.”

Zayn pouts his lips but stays quiet.

“Pectorialis major?” Harry tries again.

“You sound so sexy when you talk medical,” Zayn says dragging his dull fingernails over Harry’s stomach.

“You can’t mix muscles and bone structures, it’s not—“

Harry gets cut off by Zayn biting his nipple, circling it with his tongue in tight circles and long licks, making Harry’s back curve slowly off the couch. “My rules, boo.” He twists Harry’s nipple lightly with his fingers as he pulls his tongue around the other side.

Harry sits up, dislodging his mouth and taking his shirt completely off. He throws it across the room before lying back down. “Cheater, babe. Got four of those, by the way.”

“As if I didn’t already know.” Zayn laughs a little as he drags his tongue over the other two, though not as intensely. It makes Harry laugh again, his hands going back to rest on Zayn’s thighs.

Zayn sits up fully, his fingers curling in meandering designs over the butterfly at the center of Harry’s stomach. Harry reaches up with his hand to trace Zayn’s lips, slowly, with his fingertip. Zayn turns his head to kiss the inside of Harry’s wrist before catching it with his hand and holding it close to his mouth. He drags his teeth over Harry’s pulse and Harry hopes he can feel how it beats faster at his touch.

“Kiss me.” Harry says it because he can’t wait and because having Zayn be so goofy and sweet to him at the same time is about to make him explode.

“Uh, where?” Zayn twists their fingers together dropping them by his hip.

“Lips. And I’m not saying the name because it sounds too much like labia and it’s confusing.”Harry giggles when Zayn falls against him laughing just as hard.

“You’re the worst,” he says when he collects himself, one of his hands drawing back through Harry’s hair.

He doesn’t give Harry a chance to respond, pressing forward to kiss him slowly. Harry let’s out an involuntary breath as Zayn scratches at his scalp and puts delicious pressure on his lips. Harry sits up to get Zayn’s shirt over his head, kissing across his chest while Zayn tosses it behind him. He moves up to Zayn’s neck, licks over his pulse and huffs a breath against his earrings that has Zayn tugging on Harry’s hair to hear him go just as breathless.

It takes some maneuvering and a few awkward elbows before Zayn is situated on his back with Harry hovering over him. Harry kisses each of the tattoos along his chest and traces his abs with his fingers, his thin hips with the flat of his hand. Zayn’s hands find Harry’s lower back push his hips down when his roll up making both audibly exhale when they press together. They kiss until they’re only panting against each other’s lips, their clothed dicks rutting together and making them groan and grab at each other. Zayn gets his lips back on Harry’s neck as his hands slide in Harry’s sweats, cupping his ass and pushing him down hard, adding immeasurably to the heat already in his belly.

“Zayn,” Harry gasps as Zayn sucks a mark below his ear, one that will definitely last.

“Yeah?” Zayn takes a breath to say the word before tugging on Harry’s ear lobe with his teeth.

“Can we-” Harry presses his hips down and bites his own lip. “Bed. Now.”

Zayn pauses, his head dropping back to the pillow on the couch, cheeks pink and hair sticking up oddly. “You sure?” He traces a finger over Harry’s eyebrow.

He just nods, his hair creating a shadowed frame around both of them. “Yes.” Harry kisses the corner of his lips, “So sure.”

Harry sits up and tugs Zayn behind him to the bed falling back on the mattress with Zayn on top of him, kissing and pulling at each other harder with the promise of more. “You should wear sweats all the time,” Zayn says as he tugs them down Harry’s hips, followed by his boxers. “So much easier to get off than the jeans.”

“My ass doesn’t look as good.” Harry laughs as Zayn pauses over the button of his own jeans before pulling them off.

“That’s true.” He kneels back on the bed, pinches the side of Harry’s butt. “It’s a great ass.”

Harry hums as Zayn settles back on top of him, kissing him soundly. Harry’s hand drops between them pulling at Zayn’s dick, hard and wet in his hand. He swipes the precome on his finger and puts it between his lips to taste as Zayn watches, his eyes closing at the sight.

Zayn kisses him hard enough to make him whimper before scooting down the bed and kissing Harry’s belly and further down to his thighs. Harry’s hips jut forward when Zayn bites the soft skin on the inside of his thigh with a growl. Zayn pushes Harry’s legs apart further, sucking a mark into the skin there and holding Harry’s hips even as he tries to move away.

“Shit, fuck,” Harry sits up and then lies back down, his legs jolting around, already overwhelmed. “Need you, Z.”

“I know,” Zayn says against his skin, moving his way back up to his belly and licking broad strokes near his belly button. Harry pushes his hands back through Zayn’s hair until he looks up at him, hazel eyes blinking slowly. Harry can’t remember what he wanted to say just drags his thumb across Zayn’s swollen bottom lip and laughs when he bites down on the pad of it. “Stay here,” he kisses the inside of Harry’s wrist, “I’ll be right back.”

Harry watches him go, stroking his cock a couple of times to try and calm down. He kicks down the duvet and sheets to leave the bed with just one sheet before lounging back against the pillows in his best pin up boy pose with one bent leg and his hand propped up under his head.

Zayn laughs the second he crosses back towards the bed, his hand holding a small tube. “Look at you, hot stuff.” Harry rolls on his back laughing and tries to give his best model pout as Zayn climbs over him dropping a couple of condoms and a little bottle of lube near his side.

“Do you always keep your condoms all the way across your apartment?” Harry asks picking one up when Zayn settles back on his thighs and traces lightly over his collarbones grinning when Zayn pinches his nipple.

“No, you’re just the only reason I’ve needed the here.” Harry curves up into the kiss when Zayn leans forward to connect their lips. “The best reason,” he whispers against his mouth.

Zayn scoots down Harry’s body until he’s between his legs opening him up with slick fingers and gentle kisses against the sensitive skin of his thighs. Harry keens when Zayn bites over the marks he’s already left, seemingly permanent prints on Harrys skin. Zayn twists three fingers inside him, pressing up against the deepest spot of Harry until he’s pulling his own hair and grinding down on his fingers.

“You’re gorgeous, babe,” Zayn says pulling his hands away from Harry and running them along the sheet under him. Harry nods even though he’s not sure that’s the right reaction and grabs for the condom next to his hip handing it to Zayn. He watches with heavy eyes as Zayn rolls the condom on and rubs a hand over Harry’s stomach.

“You good?” He asks after Harry groans at his fingertips brushing the head of his cock.

“Yep, yeah,” Harry says spreading his legs as Zayn pushes two fingers back into him, curving them up into a delicious press over his prostate that makes him bite his lip over a whimper. “It’s been, you know, a bit.”

“I know,” Zayn kisses the center of his stomach. “Me too. We’ll go slow.”

Zayn eases into him, nothing like the quick fucks Harry got used to in med school when there was hardly time for anything else. He braces himself on Harry’s hips his eyebrows pulled together.

“Hey,” Harry says softly when Zayn’s concentration looks almost painful. “I said it’s been a while not that it’s been never.” He draws a line up from Zayn’s fingers where they’re clutching his hip, over the mandala and straight to the lotus flower.

Zayn huffs out a laugh as he nods. The laugh seems to do it as he pushes in further, Harry’s toes pointing hard at the full feeling. Zayn pauses while Harry adjusts, runs his fingers over his nipples, pulling playfully and relaxing Harry further. “I’m good, I’m good,” Harry says, grabbing one of Zayn’s hands in his, Zayn holding himself over him with his other hand braced against the bed, abs defining with each gentle rock of his hips, slick with sweat.

Zayn twists their hands so they’re pressed against the bed by Harry’s shoulder when he leans forward. His hips move in endless circles that Harry tries to predict until they find their rhythm, loud sounds punctuated by soft bites against lips and jaws. Harry pulls Zayn down by the back of his hair, pressing his tongue against Zayn’s and tasting them together. As Zayn’s hips build and pick up, they breathe hot air against each other’s lips, Zayn’s face dropping against Harry’s shoulder, biting against his collarbone.

“Come on, babe,” Harry tilts his face back up to look at him, “Come in me. Come on.” He kisses him, fire rolling in his belly as he does, as he tries to buck his hips and send Zayn over the edge. Zayn moves his hand between them to tug Harry off, paying special attention to the wetness at his tip as he drags it down his length, thumbing over the slit and biting into a grin when it makes Harry whine out.

“I love how loud you are, baby.” Zayn bites against his neck, “So tight and loud. Fucking perfect.” Harry feels like everything in him is shaking, his fingers down to his toes as he tries to grip onto the mattress and move his hips up against Zayn. He tries to articulate words because he could write songs about the way Zayn is taking him apart but every time he parts his lips, desperate little sounds come out instead.

There should be poems and paintings dedicated to Zayn’s face as he comes, though; it’s Harry’s only coherent thought when it happens. The way his eyebrows pull together and his lips part in a perfect O, his abs clenching and hips stuttering in the most beautiful way. His hand stumbles in it’s grasp over Harry’s cock just like his hips but then it only takes three or four more pulls before Harry’s following him, feeling his cock pulse as he spills up over Zayn’s fist and smattering along his butterfly, warm heat swallowing him up from the inside.

Harry’s head falls back as he pants, Zayn’s breathing similar against his neck until he kisses his way back to Harry’s lips so slowly, smiling when Harry pinches his ass and hums against his lips.

“I couldn’t find the words,” Harry says when Zayn rolls off of him and has his chin resting on Harry’s chest. He keeps poking his dimple and Harry shakes his head to get him off. “But, like, that was incredible. You’re incredible. Your dick is what dreams—“ he’s cut off by Zayn’s lips on his own and a hard twist of his nipple that makes him yelp. “I’m just being romantic,” Harry squeals when Zayn starts sucking on the space between his neck and shoulder.

“Romantic?” Zayn repeats when he pulls off of him and runs his fingers over his handy work on Harry’s skin. “I think true romance is in stamina, you know?” He drags his hand over Harry’s stomach and down to his cock, already half hard all over again from Zayn’s mouth on his shoulder. Harry hisses from sensitivity but it turns into a strangled sort of moan when Zayn moves his hand further to stroke over his balls.

He slides his finger further under Harry pushing up under his balls on the soft skin there and making Harry’s toes curl. “I’ll show you romance, Zayn Malik,” Harry growls, flipping them over so Zayn is under him. Zayn smirks up at him, the cocky side of smug and Harry shakes his head at him. “By the way,” Harry kisses along Zayn’s jaw, reveling in the feeling of Zayn’s scruff over his skin, “This is the best celebration of anything ever.”

This time Zayn comes across Harry’s back before they collapse in a heap, sweaty and sticky and utterly exhausted. “That was even better than the first time,” Harry says, groaning when Zayn slaps his ass before pressing kisses to the back of his neck and muttering incoherently.

Harry refuses to get up and shower so Zayn indulges him, getting a wet cloth from the bathroom to clean them up. Harry does manage to pull up the sheets and duvet, his limbs feeling like cooked spaghetti, while Zayn is in the kitchen. He comes back with two bananas and two bottles of water. He tosses one of each to Harry before crawling into bed next to him.

“Oh, sex with doctors. Sorry, coitus with medical professionals.” Harry laughs while he peels the banana, “So hot, so nutritious, so responsible.” Zayn tugs on his hair for that and it takes Harry a second to realize he isn’t doing it to be funny; he just wants to kiss Harry again, softly against his lips.

They fall asleep pressed together with Zayn’s face against the front of Harry’s neck, mumbling softly and dragging light fingertips aimlessly over each other’s skin. Banana peels and empty water bottles dropped off the side of the bed.

Harry wakes up with warmth under his cheek, his eyelashes sticking together as he blinks awake. His faced is still pressed to Zayn’s chest, his feet twisted around Zayn’s ankles like when they fell asleep. He grabs for Zayn’s phone by his shoulder to check the time jolting when he realizes he’s slept right through his alarm.

“Fuck.” The word comes out like a loud croak as he scrambles to get up, whacking Zayn in the stomach in the process.

“What’s happening?” Zayn’s voice is scratchy, his eyes still shut.

“Nothing, sorry.” Harry pauses to push Zayn’s hair back from his forehead and drop a kiss there. “I’m late,” he whispers and then he’s rolling the opposite way off the bed and dashing for the bathroom.

In the bathroom standing in front of the mirror while the water heats up, he runs his hands over the dark marks under his ears and the scratches on his thighs with his fingertips. It seems like a shame already to wash away the night. He reluctantly steps under the shower spray, hot enough to make him hiss and turn the dial down a bit.

He’s halfway through rinsing out the shampoo when Zayn opens the door to the bathroom and makes him jump in surprise. “Hi,” Zayn laughs as he shuffles into the room, rubbing his hands over his face.

“You didn’t have to get up, babe.” Harry closes his eyes under the hot water.

Zayn hums and when Harry glances over at him he sees him pushing his boxers down his legs, inches of golden skin revealed all at once. Zayn slides his hands around Harry’s waist, pressing their slick bodies together under the spray. Harry only has to tilt his face slightly so their lips brush together. He moans softly when Zayn moves his hands to squeeze his ass, his mouth dropping open further to let Zayn’s tongue in all at once.

Zayn pulls back to look at him, tongue darting against his lips, “I wanted to fuck you again this morning,” his hands squeeze him again, their hips rutting up against each other, “then we slept through your alarm and ruined it.” Harry runs his hands up along Zayn’s back while he kisses at Harry’s throat, tongue licking over the marks he just inspected in the mirror.

“Still means I’m gonna make you come before your shift.” He slides his hands to Harry’s wet stomach running up and down before rubbing over his cock, long past taking interest and curving up towards his belly. “You want that?” Zayn whispers against his ear and the hot water does nothing to stop the shivers racing along Harry’s body when he bites his ear lobe right after. He nods, kissing Zayn as hard as he can, biting at his lip. He groans when Zayn rubs his thumb over his cock and puts pressure just underneath the head of it.

“Fuck, Zayn.” Harry brings his hand to Zayn’s cock, hard and angry pink, pumping his hand up and down, thumbing over the precome at the tip. Zayn hisses against his shoulder and Harry shifts his head to block the spray from Zayn’s face, wanting nothing more than to survive hand jobs in the shower without drowning his boyfriend.

His toes twist against the tiles in the shower with each flick of Zayn’s wrist as he tries to match his pace, twisting on the upstroke just to watch Zayn’s teeth dig into his lip. He uses his free hand to hold Zayn’s jaw as he kisses him, pushing his tongue against his to taste, whining against his lips and letting Zayn swallow the sound. His tongue slides against Harry’s bottom lip and when he hooks his teeth into it, biting lightly Harry’s legs jolt as he comes. Zayn grabs him around the waist to keep him from falling. Harry doesn’t let up on Zayn even then, tracing the veins on his neck with his tongue when his head falls back. He comes with a growl spilling over Harry’s fist and up his arm.

“That was,” Harry says with his face pressed against Zayn’s neck trying to catch his breath, the hot water pouring down on them.

“Yeah,” Zayn finishes for him, grabbing his face and kissing him two times quick and then on his cheek, “I’m going back to bed. Gonna let you finish.”

“Again?” Harry laughs even as he says it, Zayn rolling his eyes and gets out of the shower. He grabs a towel off the rack and blows Harry a kiss before opening the door and sliding out. It takes Harry a second to remember what he’s even doing in the shower eventually reaching for the body wash when his brain catches up.

*

While they wait for Jax’s first surgery to come around the stress in the hospital only intensifies. The interns are responsible for studying, researching treatment plans and balancing their shifts but besides a simple grade this time, their careers are on the line. None of them are handling the stress well.

There are days where Zayn won’t say anything at all after a shift. He’ll just stare at his hands as if that will be able to change whatever it is that went wrong. Eventually, he comes back to Harry with a kiss on his forehead or a squeeze of his hand; a silent thank you, Harry has learned, for not pushing him to explain.

The emotional toll still messes with Harry’s head when he least expects it. He loves the way his chest squeezes tight when he gets to meet with a patient’s family to tell them everything is going to be all right. He bounces on the balls of his feet when he tells a patient they’re going home or he watches their healing move forward. There’s a different squeezing in his chest, though, when things go wrong. Hearts give out, lungs collapse, bodies give up, and tumors are inoperable. That’s when he hates it; when the mask he wears in the OR feels like it might suffocate him.

Zayn always seems to know when Harry is on edge after a shift; he tells him it’s the way his eyes narrow and he tugs at the skin under his lip with his thumb and forefinger. Zayn didn’t even hesitate the first time Harry barged into the locker room with his hair sticking up oddly and a demand of, “Tell me something. Anything.”

They sat against one of the lockers and Zayn rambled about his superhero obsession and comic book collections as he held Harry’s hand and drew circles over the cross tattooed there. Harry didn’t know how to thank him so he kissed his cheek and told him he was the biggest nerd he’d ever met in his life. He’s pretty sure Zayn understood what he meant.

Sometimes being with each other isn’t quite enough to solve the weight of the hospital. There are nights Zayn gets frustrated with Harry for trying to make him go out with Louis and Liam to some dive bar and he tells him he wants to be alone. Harry knows Zayn goes home then and pours over research and journals to make up for whatever question he got wrong or procedure he couldn’t explain correctly.

The first time it happened, Zayn left him in front of the hospital with no explanation. Harry chased him home and pounded down his door to make him talk, a heavy lump in his throat at the idea of Zayn being mad at him for caring too much. It took Zayn ten minutes to figure out how to explain that sometimes he’s an asshole when he gets stressed out without meaning to be. It took another fifteen after that for Harry to stop breathing so hard and flexing his fingers against his thighs like he was either going to hug Zayn and never let him go or punch him for being so stubborn.

Other times Harry is the one to snap first. Sometimes Zayn tracing circles over his inked cross annoys him more than it should and he throws Zayn’s hands off of him instead. He’ll go outside and take laps around the hospital even in the rain, even when he forgets a rain jacket and soaks his hoodie all the way through. Zayn usually finds him after one of his rain escapades and wipes the stray raindrops off his face with gentle fingers and eyes that understand.

One night in particular, the day before Jax’s first surgery, they are sitting on the floor in Zayn’s apartment after Harry’s shift to finalize their socialization plan for Jax. Dr. Garcia wants there to be a light at the tunnel, something to keep Jax’s morale up.

“After his second surgery, he’ll have his eyesight fully back, I really think it needs to do something big,” Zayn says, flipping one of the sheets over and looking at something in the journal Dr. Garcia gave them that morning. “Maybe even a trip somewhere? Like a zoo or something? We could get all of his permits and get nurses just in case. By then he’ll probably be healed so maybe we wouldn’t need nurses.” Zayn’s eyes sparkle as he talks but Harry can hardly look at him, already stuck on the idea of never getting to the second surgery or Jax not making it through the first.

“Are you even listening to me?” Zayn pulls Harry’s attention to him with his eyebrows raised and Harry glances away.

The whole walk to Zayn’s after his shift, Harry kept playing over the disparity of fair and equal in medicine, the fact that it doesn’t exist. He’d just watched a patient lose out on a heart hours before her surgery because of a tiny tear near a valve. He had to tell her boyfriend to call off the proposal he’d planned after the transplant because it wouldn’t be happening after all. Good people deserve good things to happen to them but medicine doesn’t always work that way.

The idea of planning a future for Jax that they can’t even guarantee sounds exhausting--he can’t keep getting invested in promised futures that aren’t going to happen. When he tells Zayn as much he doesn’t know what he expects but it’s certainly not Zayn flicking his forehead.

“What was that for?” Harry rubs over the spot with his eyebrows pulled together.

“Because you’re an idiot sometimes. Do you know what I first noticed about you? Besides your stupid smile?”

Harry plans to be unresponsive but then Zayn stares at him until he nods before he speaks again.

“It was your heart, you idiot. Our first day with that transplant patient in cardio you congratulated him on getting his heart when everyone else was talking technicalities. The idea of congratulating him didn’t even cross my mind. There is such intensity in the way you care about people even if they’re strangers, Harry. I know I’m a good surgeon and I went to all the right schools but I don’t think I’ll ever come close to the way you work with patients.” Harry starts messing with the hem of his jeans to avoid Zayn’s gaze. “You’re special because you care so much and you put your heart out there like that. And, yeah, sometimes it sucks but you knew that coming into it. We all did.”

Harry lifts his head to look at Zayn. “I know.”

“Good. And you’re more than warranted to be upset when things go wrong but you are not allowed to give up when it hurts. Now, should Jax go to the zoo after his second surgery or what?”

Harry stares at him for a moment wondering how the hell he ever got so lucky to find him. “Since he likes fire engines we should organize a station visit and see if he can do a ride along in one of the trucks,” he says, tapping the carpet with a red colored pencil.

“There we go, babe. Why the hell didn’t I think of that?” Zayn adds to their growing list with his black marker but Harry sees the corner of his lips curve up as he does.

*

Jax’s first procedure is the lowest risk of the three; it doesn’t stop Harry’s nerves in the pre-op meeting with the two head surgeons, one senior resident and Zayn. They go over the procedure twice step by step with a multitude of questions thrown at Harry and Zayn during. It is a teaching hospital after all.

They prep Jax for surgery together; he seems to recognize them if his grin is anything to go off of. He instantly starts telling them about his last day of school and how jealous the other kids were that he is going to miss a few months. Harry asks Jax if he thinks the teacher will throw him a party when he gets back and he can nearly feel Zayn’s smile from behind him.

They wheel his bed down to the OR after he’s slightly sedated and his parents smother him in kisses. They had the option of going in with him until he was put under but they said they would rather not see the actual operating room; it leaves the pressure of keeping Jax calm in the operating room on the interns’ shoulders.

“Jax, can you count backwards?” Zayn asks once they’re inside, under the bright lights, as Harry takes Jax’s glasses and gives them to a nurse.

“Yep, all the way from ten thousand,” he says and laughter comes from every corner of the OR. Jax has everyone wrapped around his finger.

“Let’s stick with one-hundred for now, okay?” Zayn adjusts one of his plastic gloves, “You grab Dr. Harry’s hand and squeeze as tight as you can and then you count down from one-hundred out loud to me, okay?”

There’s movement as the head surgeons come in and the anesthesiologist starts listing off numbers and measurements but Zayn doesn’t move his eyes from Jax and Harry doesn’t shift his hand as Jax grabs three of his fingers tight. He counts backwards slowly, the anesthesia hitting him fast purely for the size of his body until he goes out completely, his grip going limp against Harry’s hand. Two of the nurses and Harry flip him onto his stomach and adjust him while Zayn makes sure none of his IV hookups move or come undone. They move out of the way to let Dr. Garcia and the neuro specialist stand where they had been.

Considering Harry and Zayn are mere interns in the scheme of things, Harry knows they won't get much hands-on experience for the procedure. Still, he feels a buzzing sensation from his finger tips straight to his heart as they get started. The first half of the procedure Harry is in charge of watching the heart monitors as Zayn watches for brain activity with the anesthesiologist. The initial procedure shouldn’t activate any changes in the brain besides pressure; abnormal activity would mean something has gone wrong or the anesthesia is wearing off. Every monitor connected to Jax is secured with an alarm for if things should change but the entire point of watching the screens is to catch a change before it happens. Harry and Zayn switch jobs in the middle of the three-hour procedure with nothing out of the ordinary on either front.

Dr. Garcia announces the end of the initial phase when they are able to retract the exact amount of the tumor they had hoped for and a light cheer erupts in the operating room. Harry watches in fascination as they close the area and wrap it securely with gauze. Nurses wheel Jax back to his room for recovery and Harry and Zayn go straight into a post-operative meeting with the surgical team.

Liam and Louis are waiting outside of the conference room when they get out and Harry feels a bit like he’s playing for the Green Bay Packers or something.

“Success? Yes? I can smell the success from here,” Liam says as soon as the older surgeons have disappeared and it’s just the four of them.

“All good, yeah,” Zayn grins and Harry nods along.

“What about you? Fun times in the OR?” Harry asks crossing his arms over his chest. Liam and Louis’ long-term case involves restructuring the knee of a geriatric patient, something Louis hasn’t stopped complaining about since the initial assignment.

Louis narrows his eyes at Harry, reading the sarcasm in his voice. “I know I said he was boring but he honestly has the sense of humor of a piece of bark dust and I wish I was being dramatic.”

“He’s not being dramatic, really,” Liam chimes in throwing his arm around Zayn’s shoulders. “Of course everyone deserves equal treatment regardless of their personalities.”

“He literally hates us,” Louis says. “But, yes, we’re giving him excellent care one tiny screw in his knee at a time.”

“But it’s nothing like brain surgery so, please, please, tell us more about your day, instead.” Liam begs with his hands clasped together in front of his chest. Harry rolls his eyes but Zayn indulges them with a play by play as they head to the locker room.

Zayn heads home shortly after since his shift was before the operation but Harry returns to general surgery to finish out his. As soon as he’s done he goes up to the pediatric ward to see Jax. He’s still heavily sedated in his room and will be until the next afternoon but Harry can’t help but check on him. Jax’s mom is by his bed murmuring softly so Harry stays outside of the doorway just watching. She pushes his hair back and kisses his head before resting her forehead against his. Harry turns to leave after that, wanting to give them their moment.

All he can think as he walks towards his apartment is the real possibility that they will be able to save Jax’s life. It seemed so intangible before the surgery but he watched with his own eyes as they got the tumor out; one-third of the way there already. He makes an unanswered call and then backtracks to head to his Zayn’s place anyway.

He stops at a Thai place up the block and swings the white plastic take out bag back and forth, grinning all the way up to Zayn’s door.

“Zaynie,” he calls as soon as he lets himself in and finds the main room empty. “Surprise, it’s me. Also, you should learn to answer your phone.” He sets the food on the counter heading towards the back of the apartment. “Babe?”

Zayn’s on the bed with his knees propped up, a book resting on his thighs and his white ear buds tucked in his ears. He jumps when he sees Harry standing at the end of the bed and groans when Harry climbs up over him.

“Hi,” Harry says while pulling his ankles out until his legs are flat, his book slipping to the side. It’s open to a page about the innovations in laparoscopic technologies but Harry tosses it softly onto the floor, smiling so wide his dimples pop.

“Harry, I need to know what page that was.” Zayn reaches for the book but Harry grabs his hand in his and kisses his fingers.

“Nope.” He pulls the ear buds out of Zayn’s ears and kisses him once before sitting up, his ass on the tops of Zayn’s thighs. Zayn is still glancing towards the book like he thinks Harry might let him up to get it. “Hey.” Harry rolls his hips pointedly over Zayn’s once.

Zayn finally drags his attention to him, settling his hands on the soft part of Harry’s hips. “Hey.”

“We did brain surgery today—“

“Watched brain surgery,” Zayn corrects, thumbing over Harry’s sides.

“Excuse me, Zayn. This is my speech,” Harry says, adjusting his hips before he continues. “We did brain surgery, we have two days off and if I don’t fuck you as soon as possible, I might combust.” He smirks just watching Zayn blink slowly with his mouth dropped open slightly, like he’s waiting for his brain to catch up with Harry’s words.

When it clicks his eyes go dark. He sits up, the ear buds dropping between them as he grabs Harry’s face and licks into his mouth, groaning against his lips. “Yeah?”

“Yes,” Zayn kisses him, sliding his hands under his shirt and up his back, “Yes, yes. Fuck.”

Harry growls against him as he pushes him back down onto the bed, and bites against his neck, the book finally forgotten on the floor.

It’s like Harry can’t get enough of the way Zayn tastes, sucking his cock until he’s arching off the bed and then turning him on his hands and knees to open him up one finger at a time with kisses against his legs. He pulls each sound from Zayn like a prize until he’s breathlessly chanting Harry’s name and his toes are curling up against Harry’s calves.

When he pushes inside of Zayn for the first time he bites into his shoulder as Zayn collapses onto his forearms. He feels when Zayn starts to come apart, his muscles trembling under Harry’s movements and his words slurring to nearly silent gasps. Harry presses Zayn’s wrists together against the pillow above his head as he comes inside of him, whining right up against ear and feeling chills raise on Zayn’s back where his chest is pressed.

He pulls out and flips him over with a quick kiss against his cock before sucking him down until he gags, hollowing his cheeks. Harry presses two fingers back inside of him and hooks them upwards to get Zayn to spill in his mouth with a drawn out cry. Zayn’s hands twist in Harry’s hair and pull when he swallows him once more and then he face plants directly to the crease of Zayn’s thigh, breathing hard.

Zayn makes Harry get out of bed to eat when they recover, refusing to let him spill re-heated Thai food in his sheets. He does take a picture when Harry fashions the sheet from the bed into a toga for his whiny trek to the main room.

“At least I brought you food,” Harry says opening one of the containers and taking a bite, tongue first. They sit in the middle of the floor as usual since Zayn doesn’t seem to have qualms about Harry spilling on the carpet.

“And your dick.” Zayn looks pointedly at Harry’s crotch.

“I stand corrected. I brought you food _and_ my dick yet I have to eat dinner on the floor.”

“Because we’ve only been eating on the floor for almost three months already. Why change now?”

“No way.” Harry rolls his eyes back trying to access the mental calendar he no longer keeps track of.

“Almost.” Zayn says, swallowing a bite and kissing Harry’s lips. He tastes like spicy chicken it almost burns Harry’s tongue. “Your toga is charming. By the way.”

“Learned this in college.” Harry adjusts the knot by his shoulder, “Among other things but mostly toga techniques.”

“Valuable education.” Zayn nods around another bite, “I wish I’d learned to do the toga thing.”

“Why didn’t you? I can show you now.”

“Not actual togas, Harry.” He smiles softly when Harry tilts his head. “I mean the party scene, I guess. I just spent a lot of college so scared I wouldn’t get to med school that I didn’t have as much fun as I could, I guess. I’d still go out but I wouldn’t get that drunk so I could wake up and study without a hangover.”

“My little nerd,” Harry coos and scrunches his nose. “And then in med school?”

“So worried about getting into the best residency program. Nearly developed stress ulcers.”

Harry remembers when he first met Zayn, he couldn’t get him to relax inside the hospital, let alone do something outside of their shifts. Sometimes he still gets lost and pulls back from everything but here he is sitting in his boxers across from Harry in a toga eating noodles; Harry would like to think something about their relationship had a role in that shift. “Well, if you ever need to learn how to make a toga, I’m your man.”

Zayn laughs like Harry’s missed the point completely but he doesn’t correct him.

Harry wakes up with Zayn’s ankle slotted between his own and Zayn’s arm wrapped around him, palm flat against his heart. He traces the mandala on the back of his hand and jumps when Zayn lifts his fingers one at a time and kisses the back of his shoulder.

“Sorry,” Harry says, his voice raspy. “Didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“Was already almost up,” Zayn kisses his shoulder again and taps his hand against Harry’s chest. “Of course on days off I don’t care about being up at sunrise. Go figure.”

“Days off,” Harry cheers and wiggles his toes, “Two of them.” He holds up two fingers reaching behind him and patting Zayn’s head before rolling to his back to look at him. “Morning.” He kisses Zayn and smiles when Zayn hums against his mouth.

“Babe.” Zayn kisses the corner of his lips and pushes his hand back through his hair; Harry closes his eyes at the feeling. “What should we do with our days off? Both of them?” He holds up two fingers and pretends to jab Harry’s eyes.

Harry grabs his hand before he can get to his eyes and holds it by his chest, “I don’t know.”

“Where’s the list you and Liam made?” Zayn twists his hand so he’s holding Harry’s hand properly, pulling at his fingers.

“The adventure list?” Harry twists his neck to look up at him. Liam and Harry had scrawled it at lunch one day after their hike but they hadn’t got around to going to any of the places besides bars and restaurants with their constantly changing schedules.

“Yeah, the adventure list.” Zayn sounds a little resigned to the full title but Harry sees him trying not to smile when he kisses his forehead. He grabs the wrinkled up list from his bag and slides back in his warm spot under the covers pressing his face against Zayn’s chest while he looks at it. He breathes in the smell of Zayn, the day old cologne, something vaguely like sex and sweat and the simple sweet smell he always seems to carry with him.

“Beach.” He points at the word written sideways and scrunched together when Harry lifts his face up. “Let’s go to the beach.”

“Really?” Harry pulls himself up to rest on his elbow.

“Yeah. Let’s get out of here for a bit. Just us. I’ll find us a cheap motel we can use Louis’ car. What do you think?” Harry blinks up at him running his lip under his teeth. “Is this a yes or do you just want me to suck your dick?” Harry throws his head back laughing as Zayn bites his chest and tickles his sides to make him squirm and flip to his stomach.

“Yes,” he yells, grabbing for the headboard to try and wiggle from Zayn’s fingers, “Yes to all of it.”

“Get back here, then, you brat.” Zayn is laughing just as hard trying to get Harry to stay still; winning when he pulls Harry back by his hips and sucks a purple mark right on his ass cheek. Harry whines that he’s cheating but then he’s too horny and hard to do anything but willingly comply with Zayn’s mouth after that.

By noon, they’re flying down the highway west towards the coast with rain sliding down the windshield, the Arctic Monkeys album playing in the background. They just left a disgruntled Louis in the lobby of the hospital as they ran away with his keys in hand. Liam was in the background promising to take him on a weekend adventure sometime too. Louis looked anything but consoled.

The backseat has their two backpacks and a few bags of groceries and the pillows from Zayn’s bed because Harry is weirdly allergic to a lot of the fibers in hotel bedding. Zayn called him high maintenance.

“It’s supposed to rain all day, all night and all tomorrow,” Zayn says from the passenger seat, sliding his finger over the screen of his phone.

Harry tugs down his beanie, “I’ve never been to a rainy beach.”

“Babe, before you moved here had you even seen the rain?” Zayn laughs and adjusts the volume on the stereo. “My California sun baby.”

“Rude. I had seen rain before moving here.” Harry reaches across to poke his stomach. “Just not, like, in recent years. We had a drought, you know...” his voice trails off and he pouts his lips. Zayn grabs his hand over the console and kisses the inside of his wrist for his effort.

Portland is only an hour and a half away from the coast so they pass the time playing a round of twenty questions. Then, Harry tries to start up a game he used to play on road trips with Gemma but he can’t explain the rules correctly so they end up on round two of twenty questions.

The hotel Zayn booked is nothing like Harry had pictured; he’d pictured a last minute booking for less than seventy dollars as a shack nowhere near the ocean. Seaside Suites has fresh blue paint and stands out bright against the grey skies, the ocean just behind it. “No one comes to the beach in November,” Zayn says as they pull into the parking lot. “They were basically giving rooms away for free.”

“Kings of the beach,” Harry yells as he parks and waves his hands in the air. Zayn stares passively at him before getting out of the car.

The room is as standard as the building but surpasses all of Harry’s expectations by not being a run down shack. There is a heavy sea creature theme as far as décor but there’s also a tiny electric fireplace (which can’t possibly be in the safety code), half a kitchen and a king size bed.

“What should we do now?” Harry spins in three full circles in the middle of the room while Zayn plugs his phone into the wall to charge.

“Go explore, obviously. Or, sorry, go an adventure.” He uses air quotes around adventure as usual. “I can take you to an indoor aquarium anytime.” He picks up one of the many stuffed whales from the bed and tosses it at Harry. It hits him in the face but not for lack of trying to catch it. Zayn muffles his laugh into the arm of his sweatshirt.

They head out with more clothes on than, Harry’s sure, he’s ever had on anywhere near a beach. Zayn holds his hand as they go over to the boardwalk shops near the hotel, a light rain falling.

There are a couple antique shops they go in, though they blanch at the price of nearly everything they touch. “I think if I ever become an antique collector, that’s when I’ll know I’ve made it,” Zayn says setting down a retro lunch box with the Ninja Turtles on it, a three hundred dollar price tag hanging from the handle.

They go to one of the arcades and try to do Dance Dance Revolution against each other. Harry tells Zayn it’s reminiscent of his rooftop Boyz II Men dancing and Zayn makes him take it back. “Love, you’re dancing is a hazard for everyone in at least a fifty-foot radius,” Zayn says, kissing Harry’s lips when he pouts.

There’s a homemade candy shop next door they go through and Zayn can’t stop making fun of Harry when he starts up a conversation with the owner about how he worked in a bakery once. Still, Zayn buys almost a pound of gummy bears made from scratch so he knows it was worth it.

“Should we go down to the beach?” Harry asks. The clouds are starting to get dark above them.

“Might as well,” Zayn says, looking up at the sky.

It takes a little bit to trudge through the tall beach grass to get down to the actual shoreline. The wind whips around them and the rain gets steadily heaving, pelting their faces, leaving them spluttering in the grey light from the clouds with the dark waves pounding the shore.

“This is not a real beach,” Harry yells and Zayn starts laughing and shaking his head. They walk closer towards the waves but then there’s a flash of lightening over the horizon. Harry’s the first to scream but Zayn’s the one to grab his hand and tug him back towards the hotel without so much as a glance backwards.

“That was a quick adventure.” Zayn unzips his rain jacket and hangs it over the back of a chair as Harry undoes his belt and slips off his jeans, soaked through completely.

“I think you’re probably supposed to observe the beach during the winter here.” He lays his jeans out next to Zayn’s jacket, “You live and you learn, all that, though.” He waves his hand around and yelps when Zayn pinches the back of his bare thigh.

“We have to come back in the summer probably. I bet it’s nicer then.” Zayn unzips his backpack and pulls out a pair of black sweats while Harry rifles through his own bag. He tries not to smile at the promise of coming back; it’s not like he’s doubted what he has with Zayn but the idea is a good one. “It’s so different from the east coast. Like, even the sand is different, if that makes sense?”

“Wetter,” Harry supplies, hopping on the one leg not yet in his pants.

“Less chunky, I was thinking.” Zayn tugs off his sweatshirt and hangs it over a chair, pulling on a grey jumper instead.

“Are those minions?” Harry stops with his pants halfway up his legs to look at the three dancing yellow figures on the front of Zayn’s shirt.

“Sick, right?” Zayn pulls it down in the front proudly. “My little sister picked it out for me before I started residency.”

“It’s possibly the dorkiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Harry says, warmth pushing up through his chest. “But you make it very studly.”

“Thanks, babe.” Zayn pulls his hair into a half-bun, watching out one of the windows as the rain comes down steadily. He jumps when Harry comes up behind him and wraps his arms around his waist. He presses his face to the side of Zayn’s neck, sighing against his skin when Zayn twists their fingers together across his belly.

Harry usually likes to explore new places he visits but the rain in no way entices them to leave their room again. They watch a few more episodes of House of Cards on the bed and then Harry calls his mom to catch up for a bit while Zayn’s on the phone with his dad. Harry sits in the corner with the phone pressed to his ear but he keeps looking up whenever Zayn breaks into full on laughter at whatever his dad keeps saying,

Later, Zayn sits on the counter next to the two burner stove waiting for his pot of water to boil for noodles while Harry makes a sauce his mom usually makes in the fall when the weather is cooler. It doesn’t necessarily get _cold_ at home but it cools down from the summer weather at least. He keeps forgetting the order of the ingredients, though; groaning each time he remembers something he forgot and sending Zayn into another hysterical laughing fit.

“Here, try it,” Harry says after he’s put everything in it, using a plastic spoon to scoop some up.

“You didn’t even try it first, you’re probably trying to poison me.” Zayn spreads his legs so Harry can stand between them anyway.

“I don’t think the order matters but, yeah, I’m too scared to find out myself.” He watches the spoon as it goes between Zayn’s lips before he pulls it back slowly. Zayn drags his tongue over his bottom lip to get the rest of it. Harry loses his train of thought for a moment to kiss Zayn, tasting the rich sauce straight off of his tongue.

“It’s good,” Zayn whispers when Harry pulls back, his hands running up and down the tops of Zayn’s thighs. He reaches forward again, cupping behind Harry’s head to pull him in for another kiss until the rising steam from the noodles breaks them both apart.

They turn on the fireplace while they eat, legs crossed and facing each other in front of it. Zayn brought a bottle of red wine from his apartment so they drink that as well, sipping glasses of it after their food is gone and darkness has rolled over the windows, a warm glow from the one lamp the motel provided.

“Can I ask you a question?” Harry asks as Zayn pulls open the bag of gummy bears and starts organizing them in his lap by color.

“Yeah,” Zayn laughs and tosses a gummy bear at Harry’s head probably for asking if he can ask a question in the first place.

“First of all, what is your gummy bear obsession?”

“It’s not an obsession,” Zayn rolls his eyes and throws another bear in the general area of Harry’s mouth. It lands on his tongue and both of their eyes go wide at the coincidence, Harry cheering as he chews. “Love that big mouth of yours,” Zayn says with an appreciative grin.

It sends blood rushing up into Harry’s cheeks even though his mouth has already been on every part of Zayn; he still gets butterflies around him.

“As for the gummy bears,” Zayn presses on, “When I was younger my dad and I used to go on bike rides without the girls and then we’d split a pack of gummy bears at the end of the trail before we rode back home.”

“That’s actually really cute,” Harry says--he’d mostly been hoping for another reason to make fun of him.

“I know.” He takes a sip of his wine, “You said first of all. Do you have something else to ask?”

“Yeah, kind of. I was just thinking how becoming a surgeon has always been the big goal but I don’t think I’ve ever thought that much about what happens after residency, you know?” Harry pulls his eyebrows together, “I guess that’s not so much as a question but a scary observation.”

“I know what you mean,” Zayn says, biting another gummy bear between his teeth. “I know I’ll want to do research but do volunteer stuff too, you know? Travel, definitely.”

“Really?” Harry tries not to smile, his lips twitching.

“Yeah. I want to do, like, Doctors Without Borders or something similar. They always need surgeons. Why do you look like that?”

“Am I not allowed to smile?” Harry laughs. “It’s just funny. I’ve always wanted to do something similar. It just feels like if I have this skill that not a lot of people have I should use it to give back, you know?”

“Exactly.” Zayn turns on his side and traces lines along Harry’s ankle where it rests by his arm. “And eventually I want to settle down somewhere to raise a family.”

“Yeah, the family thing has always been really important to me, too.” Harry rubs his hands quickly over his face. “In the honor of full disclosure I should tell you my dad, my real dad, is a surgeon. He travels around the world and publishes his research in journals.”

“Okay,” Zayn says slowly, “You don’t talk about him very often.” He doesn’t say it like an accusation or a question.

“Yeah. Basically, he chose his career instead of staying in one place with my family. He said he couldn’t focus on his research if he knew he had to go to a tee-ball game and a dance recital. I was so young when my parents got divorced I really thought it was dance recitals and tee-ball that made him leave.” Harry laughs and rolls his eyes. “I went so far as to tell my mom I didn’t want to do it anymore.”

“You quit tee-ball?”

“No, I was the one in dance.” Harry grins, “It was technically theater but more or less it was dance.”

“And it taught you absolutely nothing,” Zayn laughs but rubs his hand under Harry’s sweats and up over his calf over and over.

“Anyway,” Harry scrunches his nose at Zayn, “My dad never took the time to settle down but it’s important to me that I do eventually. I’m, like, hyperaware of not turning into my dad. He’s not a bad person, he just made surgery his whole life and I don’t want that. I want a house and kids and a few dogs running around, you know? Maybe an obese cat, too.”

Zayn rolls over onto his stomach and pushes himself up on his hands and knees to crawl up Harry’s legs. “Thank you for telling me,” he ducks his head and kisses Harry’s stomach through his shirt once, “It means a lot.”

“It’s not a big secret,” Harry’s voice is airy as Zayn moves to sit in his lap and starts pressing his lips against his neck.

“I know but I like learning these things about you. I like when we try to figure each other out like this.” He pulls his head back to look at Harry, “It’s nice.”

Harry goes to say that he does too, that learning dumb things about each other makes him so happy but then Zayn is kissing him and every word he knows melts in his mind like goo. Zayn pushes Harry’s hair back from his face and groans against his lips when Harry turns the kiss filthy, pulling at Zayn’s bottom lip with his teeth and gripping his ass to drag him down against him.

They take each other’s clothes off slowly, something about the night making them move at a lazy pace rather than the ripping and tearing that usually happens. Zayn lays Harry down on the bed, the sheets soft against his bare shoulders. Zayn is so gentle with each sweep of his lips after that; words are caught in Harry’s throat to describe a full feeling he can’t quite articulate.

When Zayn slides into him after opening him up so slowly it borderlines on sweet torture, Harry’s toes curls against the sheets, his head rolls so his back arches off the bed. Zayn grasps his hands and pushes them back by his head as he moves, soft kisses along his jaw. Harry sucks a mark into his neck, memorizing the sweet sounds Zayn makes against his ear.

With each hot pull in his belly Harry feels like there’s a string tying him to Zayn, with each kiss a knot made he won’t be able to undo. It’s almost overwhelming the physical sensations as deep as the emotional and he fights Zayn’s grip on his hands just to grab Zayn’s back and hold him closer until there’s not a whisper of air between their skin.

“What do you want, babe?” Zayn whispers against his neck when their breathing has gone ragged, their low moans mixing in a familiar soundtrack.

Harry wants to say touch me, his aching cock wants him to, too, but, “Everything,” comes out instead and he feels Zayn’s smile against the spot under his ear. Zayn’s fingers grip his hips a little harder and Harry leaves the word there, he doesn’t even try to take it back.

It feels like he’s coming undone completely as Zayn presses into him harder, whispering against his ear before kissing him and letting Harry suck on his tongue as he comes untouched between them, hot and wet against their bellies. Zayn’s eyebrows pull together and his mouth drops open as he comes a moment later and Harry’s feet point with his toes twisting over the last wave of pleasure.

They lay against each other after that trying to catch their breath with Zayn’s face pressed against Harry’s neck, their bodies slick with sweat and come. It’s still just as sweet, though when Zayn whispers, “I love you Harry Styles,” against the soft skin between his neck and shoulder. In that moment, Harry promises he won’t forget, he feels like he might just have everything.


	3. Chapter 3

“Babe, are you done?” Harry asks, rolling back and forth behind Zayn in one of the nurse’s special chairs while he waits. They have plans to get dinner at a restaurant that overlooks the river--partly to celebrate Harry’s fourth assist surgery, partly because they like to go on actual dates to balance out their Netflix binges and graphic conversations about blood and bodily functions. The relaxation from getting out of the city for a weekend has seeped away almost completely as the stress in the hospital only gets higher and their responsibilities gather.

“Almost, boo.” Zayn flips over the next sheet, using the ridiculous nickname that makes Harry laugh into his hand. Zayn is writing with his tongue poking out between his lips, the way he used to do when Harry was still scared to talk to him--wanted so desperately to break his pieces apart. “How was your shift?”

“Oh god, Zayn.” Harry stops the chair suddenly, can’t believe he forgot to tell the story he’s been holding onto all day. “I had my first piercing injury.”

“Yeah?” Zayn glances over his shoulder.

Harry nods. “Man and woman, connected by their penile and vaginal piercings. Like hooked around each other.”

“Kinky.” Zayn grins and looks back down at the paper, “They were just having a bit of fun probably. Oh, fuck.” He crumples up the paper he’s writing on and tosses it in the bin under the desk, grabbing a new one out of a file. Harry continues on.

“They were from a nursing home. Their daughter drove them to the ER wrapped in a blanket. She was mortified and they couldn’t stop laughing, which, as you would expect, jostled the piercings even more.”

Zayn’s laugh echoes around the floor, he hangs his head down as his shoulders shake. “There’s no way that’s real.”

“It’s real. It is so fucking real and of course I was the one who had to help them.” He pauses and shakes his head over the memory of what helping them had looked like, the gnashing metal sound and skin pulling he never wants to experience again. “The woman told me they have a sex swing shipping in next week. I just asked them to please be careful.”

“That’s all you can do, really. Ah, fuck, I copied this wrong again.” He groans and tosses the paper in the garbage before grabbing a blank sheet.

Harry slides his chair up behind him and drags his hands up Zayn’s back, feeling the hard lines of tension there. He kisses the middle of his shoulder blades through his scrub top, smiling when Zayn relaxes under his lips. He rests the side of his head against Zayn’s back while he finishes his paperwork listening to his even breathing and the barely there glide of the pen against the paper.

-

The mounting pressure of the hospital leaves Harry and Zayn spending most of their free time sweating and sliding against each others bodies, panting against each others lips. They take their energy and tension and turn it on each other, borderline too hard in all the right ways until they’re too exhausted to move and pass out on each other instead. Some nights, even after coming twice (three times the night Harry managed to tie Zayn’s hands to his headboard), it still isn’t enough for them to shut down their minds and they lay awake instead. They’re constantly moving and working and studying and memorizing--sometimes Harry feels like he can’t take a breath for fear of falling behind.

One such night, when a massage for Harry’s bad back turns into a two hour marathon on the floor complete with rug burns, they end up pressed together like magnets on Harry’s mattress. Harry is pulled from the edge of deep sleep when he feels Zayn tapping his fingers against his back. He watches through squinted eyes as Zayn gets out of bed and goes through Harry’s bag in the middle of the floor. He pulls out notecards and sits down, uses the flashlight on his phone to flip through them.

Harry only watches for a moment before he gets up too, wrapping the duvet around him and sitting next to Zayn. He rests his head on his shoulder and reviews the cards as silently as Zayn goes through them, pressing soft kisses to his neck every now and then. When Zayn’s satisfied with the cards he looks over at Harry and kisses each of his eyelids with a whispered _thank you_ that lights Harry up from the inside out. He’d sit with Zayn every night if he wanted him to.

In the morning Zayn mentions feeling guilty for always being on-edge and keeping Harry awake but Harry covers his mouth with his hand. He doesn’t mind being there with Zayn because he knows Zayn will always be there for him. They’re a team; they’ve been a team since they were literally paired together as one on that first day.

*

Rain is slamming the sides of the hospital and casting dark shadows through the skylights on the morning of Jax’s second surgery. Harry had a heavy feeling in his stomach when he woke up; the first time he was alone in his bed in weeks. He had stayed late to practice in one of the labs and went home when Zayn text him he was going to bed instead of waiting up.

More than the loneliness of the morning, though, he attributes the feeling to Jax’s impending surgery. As they went over three times the day before, this is the big one. They’ll be trying to retract the tumor pressing on his eyes as well as the one pressing on the nerve that’s slowing his speech. It’s a complicated procedure, same as the first one, but the recovery time is more dangerous since they won’t know the effects of the procedure until Jax fully wakes up.

Harry finds Zayn in the locker room before rounds and pins him back against a locker with his hips and teases his tongue into his mouth. He rolls his hips forward, borderline obscene for the setting, but he feels like he needs to push out the anxious tension rolling through him.

“Harry, stop.” Zayn pushes him back and shakes his head, “I’m gonna be late.” He presses a quick kiss to the corner of Harry’s lips before he dashes out of the locker room, shoes squeaking against the floor.

Jax is quiet while Harry preps him that afternoon; he doesn’t tell any stories or react to Harry talking to him like he usually does. His mom says he’s had a rough couple of weeks recovering from the last procedure and the slur of his speech getting progressively worse to the point where he doesn't want to speak at all.

It’s hard to comprehend the idea they are going to cut into is brain again before the other suture site is even fully healed. But, as Dr. Garcia explained it to them, the only way to make sure they get all of the tumors without backtracking or causing more damage is to be quick and aggressive. Jax’s mom repeats all of this to Harry while he finishes getting Jax ready. He nods along like he hasn’t been repeating it to himself all week.

“Hey, buddy.”

Harry turns towards the door to see Liam coming in, smiling right at Jax.

“How’s it going?” He holds out his hand and Jax fist bumps him ever so lightly, his hand shaking. Liam had been assigned pediatrics all last week while Jax was recovering and, go figure, he’s already just as attached as Harry and Zayn are.

“Jax is heading to surgery in a minute,” Harry says putting his hand on the top of Jax’s head. They shaved all of his hair to have free access in surgery; it’s like peach fuzz under Harry’s hand.

“All right, I just wanted to say hello,” Liam bends down to get eye level with him. “And I’ll see you when you wake up, okay? We can talk more about Batman and I’m sure Zayn wants to hear more about your fire truck collection.” Jax does little more than nod and Liam pats his leg under the blanket, his smile tight and Harry knows exactly why.

“Zayn was in here?” He asks as Liam helps him put up the guardrails on the bed so it can be pushed.

“Yeah, last week, almost everyday. He came in on his breaks,” Liam says. “I figured you would have known.”

“No, he didn’t say anything,” Harry smiles slowly at the idea of Zayn stopping in just to say _hello_ , “That’s good, though. I’m glad.”

Harry gives Jax’s parents one more opportunity to say goodbye before they head down for the operating room with a few nurses in tow and Liam bringing up the rear just to be sure the whole procession makes it safely.

He doesn’t see Zayn until they’re all in the operating room. He’s in the corner talking with the neuro specialist and Harry smiles under his mask, proud of Zayn for making that kind of connection when most interns can’t say more than a few words to the senior surgeons.

The procedure is six hours this time, and nearly as draining physically as it is mentally. It’s a more hands on procedure for the interns as well; holding instruments in place with steady hands and making minuscule cuts when more than four hands are needed at once. It’s exhilarating to be near the operation at all, watching the surgeons move fluidly with their scalpels and cameras and drills. Harry watches as part of the tumor is placed in the metal tray the nurse holds. He’s observed tumors before, under microscopes, in scans, and in labs, but it’s sobering to see it in the OR—physical evidence of something so recklessly debilitating.

A machine blaring and a red light flashing out of the corner of his eye pulls Harry’s focus back in, heart suddenly racing as he sees what’s happening. It’s slow motion and a blur of speed at the same time as everyone moves at once. There are calls for suction and sterile pads, shocks of bright red against white gloves and light blue gowns, the beeping relentless from in the corner. Harry undoes the suction tube from beside the operating table passing it to Dr. Garcia. He can’t hear anything but echoes as he watches, stepping out of the way so the surgeons can work, watching as they desperately try to stabilize. Shaking heads and cursing as the anesthesiologist gets up from the chair near the monitor to adjust one of the bags. It all feels uncontrollable like they’ll never get ahead of the bleeding as the machines scream louder, as the tension in the room rises steadily. Harry can feel his heart beating in his ears, his mind racing.

As suddenly as it erupts, though--it dies back down. Everyone’s chests are heaving as the machine alarms stop piercing the OR and the red lights go back to steady instead of flashing.

“Okay.” Dr. Garcia is the one who speaks first, “We’re almost done here. I’m just going to close up.” She nods once to herself before she starts moving again but Harry is rooted to the spot. Sometimes he feels like he can be a surgeon, other days he is terrified, feels like he’ll never be ready.

The feeling lingers in his stomach when they meet with Jax’s parents after the surgery but in the conference room for privacy. Dr. Garcia explains the loss of the blood and the way the spasms of the nerves might have caused permanent damage to certain functions in Jax’s brain. The plan is to keep him in a medically induced coma for the next few days to let him heal further before they assess him. It all boils down to a question mark with no answers. They got the second phase of the tumor but they still don’t know the lasting effects.

Harry keeps his eye trained on Zayn as he writes notes in the meeting and picks at the wood of the table intermittently. He won’t look up at Harry but he can hardly blame him; the entire day has been like an emotional car crash that’s dragged on and on.

When Dr. Garcia is done presenting, Harry offers to walk Jax’s parents back to his recovery room. It’s a quiet walk but Jax’s mother grasps Harry’s hand in hers as they go. He gives them both hugs as they settle in for the night around Jax. They won’t leave their son’s side for the next few days, he knows; they barely left when he was healthily healing after the first procedure.

Harry checks the rest of the pediatric floor for Zayn then down in the locker room but he comes up empty. It’s been a weird day and he just wants to be in Zayn’s bed, hide under the covers like when he was a kid and stay there. He doesn’t really need Zayn to join him, if he already has plans; he just can’t shake his stomachache and he doesn’t want to be alone.

Harry changes back into his sweatshirt and jeans before sitting on the bench to wait for Zayn to show up. He probably got caught up talking to an older resident or checking in on a patient since that’s a thing he does these days, evidently. He tries to stifle a yawn with his sleeve jolting when he feels a hand on his shoulder. There’s another wave of shock when he tilts his head back with his lips almost pursed for a kiss to see Louis instead of who he expected.

“Hey, Lou.” He clears his throat and stands, “What’s up?”

“Nothing.” Louis adjusts the drawstrings on his hoodie, “You just looked like you were about to fall asleep sitting there. Wanted to make sure you were good.”

“Oh yeah, I am. Thanks. I was just waiting for Zayn.”

“You missed him, dude.” Louis points over his shoulder, “He was walking out like ten minutes ago.”

“Really?” Harry puts his bag over his shoulder, the weight heavier in his stomach. He must have thought Harry was working later even though the procedure alone had been six hours already.

Louis nods, “I watched you guys from the gallery today. That was pretty intense.” They start heading out the door together, Harry pulling a beanie over his ears to face the chilliest December air he’s ever experienced.

“It caught me off guard, all of it. You always talk about what can go wrong in surgeries but seeing it happen is something else. And just the fact it’s a kid,” Harry’s voice trails off.

“I know what you mean. Everything is moving so fast and there’s all these split second decisions. Half the time I’m like how the fuck did you decide that?”

Harry laughs at the candidness of his words, “I guess that’s why we have five years of residency, eh?”

“We haven’t even made it through one and I feel like my heart is going to give out or my lungs are going to collapse.”

“One day we’ll look back on this and laugh,” Harry says, pulling his hood up over his beanie for warmth. “Hopefully.”

“Or we’ll be residency intern drop outs crying about what could have been,” Louis shrugs and Harry rolls his eyes as they separate to go opposite ways on the street. “Goodnight, Harold.”

“Night, Lou,” Harry calls back over his shoulder taking his phone out to call Zayn. He’s completely unsurprised to not get an answer, already turning down the street to go to his place anyway. He’s exhausted and he wants to crawl in Zayn’s bed and never leave.

Zayn pulls his door open with a blank face and a quiet, “Hey,” after Harry knocks. His hair is pushed back in a haphazard mess and his eyes are red like he's been rubbing at them. Usually Harry loves when his hair is like that because he made it that way—this time is the new exception, everything about it feels wrong. Zayn walks away but leaves the door open.

“Sorry, I called when I left but you didn’t answer. Is this okay? That I’m here?” Harry takes a tentative step over the threshold.

“Yeah, Harry. It’s fine.” Zayn sits on the couch, his papers spread on the coffee table in front of him. Harry closes the door behind him; the soft click of it latching into place seems shattering in the silence. He lets his bag slide to the floor then crosses over to the kitchen where he gets a glass and fills it with water from the tap. Through it all Zayn doesn’t look up at him once, tapping his pen over a stack of papers.

“Is everything okay?” Harry leans on the counter, looking over at Zayn.

“Yep.”

“Oh, okay.” Harry bites his lip waiting for Zayn to say anything at all but nothing comes. He swallows hard when Zayn doesn’t even look up. He goes across the room to where Zayn is sitting; even with his back curved over to read, Harry can see the strain rolling off of him. Harry watches over his shoulder as he runs the back of the pen over the same line of text again and again.

“Are you sure? I feel like there’s something going on I don’t know about.” He licks his bottom lip and stares at Zayn imploring him to just look at him. To tell him what he needs from him to be okay because Harry will do it. He’ll push away his own exhaustion to help Zayn with his and he’s never felt like that before, like Zayn being okay is more important than his own well being. It’s a funny thing to realize in the stilted silence of Zayn’s apartment so he pushes the thought back down and doesn’t say anything at all.

“It’s nothing, okay? Just leave it alone.” Zayn looks up at him when he speaks but he doesn’t meet his eyes, looking somewhere near his nose instead. His tone makes Harry’s shoulders tense as he looks back down to his page.

“Zayn.” Harry curls his hands into fists when Zayn looks at him again, his eyes hard, face blank. “Can we talk about whatever this? Or I can leave and—“

“Yeah, just leave.” He interrupts with his voice flat but he doesn’t turn back to his work this time. Harry knows the Zayn who needs time alone to decompress but even that version of Zayn kisses him slowly before he does or promises to call him when he feels better. This version of Zayn is hard and cold; when his eyes meet Harry he only looks bored.

“Zayn, I—“

“Stop fucking distracting me, Harry.” The words burst from Zayn’s lips cutting Harry off, the face that goes with them makes Harry take a step back in stunned silence.

“I didn’t mean to.” He clears his throat to speak louder as his mind races, “I just wanted to see you. I didn’t mean to.” He realizes he’s repeated himself and he can feel his cheeks redden.

“I don’t just mean tonight,” Zayn shakes his head and grabs at his hair. Harry swears his heart stutters in his chest. “This is all I want, to be a surgeon.”

“I know.” Harry says it slowly, like he’s trying to buy time.

“I just, I can’t.” He fists his hands in his hair again and drops them to his lap leaving it messier than before. “I keep losing track of my notes and I can’t pay attention in meetings, I was late to rounds today,” he shakes his head and rubs his hands over his face. “I just can’t do it. It's all too much.”

Harry takes another step back, eyebrows pulling together. “What do you mean you can’t do it? Like you’re the only one stressed? I feel the same way, you know. None of this is easy for any of us. I just thought it would be better around you tonight but maybe not. “

“I can’t be distracted all the time. This,” he motions around to the piles on his table, “this all means too much.” It’s like the worlds hang in the air before Harry knows how to respond, sitting between them like physical pieces. “I mean, like,” Zayn knocks his pen to the ground but he doesn’t make a move to pick it up, “I need time to focus because surgery is why I’m here—not just to fuck around.”

“Fuck around? Are you kidding me?” Harry huffs a hard breath out through his teeth, the pieces connecting slowly. Here he thought he knew Zayn better than anyone but he hadn’t seen this coming.

“Harry, that’s—“ Zayn doesn’t finish his sentence because Harry puts his hand out and shakes his head, effectively cutting him off.

“No, Zayn. Stop. I get it,” he laughs but the sound is bitter in the air and stops as quick as it comes. “I’m the distraction because I don’t mean as much, right?” The words come out measured even though his brain is suddenly hurling words towards his mouth. “Am I close?”

Zayn blinks at him, doesn’t try to deny it or fight it. It’s the dangling moment between them that makes Harry bite the inside of his cheek so hard he almost brings tears to his eyes. He turns towards the door and scoops his bag off the ground before he thinks better of it though he turns back, jaw set in a hard line, “So is this it, then? You’re just done with me?” His hands shake so he crosses his arms, willing himself to stay in control. He meant to say ‘us’ but maybe ‘me’ is all it takes.

Zayn looks up at the ceiling then, like he’s counting to ten or dealing with a petulant kid. Harry blows air out of his lips and when he tries to speak again his tongue feels thick in his mouth. Zayn puts his head down, face against the upturned palms of his hands, without glancing at Harry once.

Harry watches him to see if he’ll look up, to see if he’ll say anything but the silence goes on uninterrupted. He bites down hard on his back teeth to control his voice, “I don’t know where you get off acting like this but none of this was ever just fucking around to me.”

He turns and let’s himself out then, closes the door behind him. The echoing of the latch in the hallway sends his pulse racing even more. He hates himself for each time he looks over his shoulder on the walk home hoping to see a flash of black leather behind him.

In his apartment he showers with the water so hot it burns until his skin is pink. He gets in his bed naked, pulling the covers up to his ears and checking his phone. The screen lights up in the dark with the lock screen image of him and Zayn on the too big bed at the beach. Zayn’s face is scrunched up in an overly exaggerated smile because Harry chided him for being too “model pouty” in all of the other pictures. Now the picture seems haunting with no messages notifications covering it and Harry tosses it off the edge of his bed.

*

Harry’s alarm is a loud pull to reality in the morning as he reaches blindly for his phone to turn it off. He has a crick in his neck and drool dried up his cheek but it doesn’t compare with the weight in his stomach that has seemingly settled there.

He thinks of his mom while he gets ready for work, the way she always says things look better in the light of morning. Harry almost believes it, the way he did when he was seven, but he walks out the door without a single notification on his phone and he knows the situation hasn’t changed. He takes the long route on his walk, his mind battling between anger and confusion at a loss for where to land.

In the locker room he pulls on his scrubs with nerves pricking up his spine about how to face Zayn. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to act around the person he’s spent every day with for six month--four of those as way more than friends--who, evidently, no longer wants to be with him.

It puts his other break ups into perspective. Petty things, they were. He could take different paths to classes in school or aggressively ignore his ex if they had to be near each other. Zayn is his co-worker and intern partner. He doesn’t know how to avoid him like that; he doesn’t know if he wants to. He retracts the last thought as soon as it registers. The memory of him asking if Zayn was done with him and Zayn staying silent plays on repeat instead; each echo in his mind like a slap to the face.

That first day slides by slowly with the pit of permanence sinking in Harry’s stomach; he doesn’t see or hear from Zayn once. Day two and three are much of the same--if it wasn’t for the fact Harry doesn’t see Liam and Louis either, he’d assume Zayn had fled the state.

They’ve fought before over dumb things like medical community policies or the time they refuse to speak of when they yelled at each other over what flavor of lube to try in the grocery store. They’ve always gotten over it, though. Like the time when Zayn called Harry as soon as he got home to tell him he was turning around and coming back; the time Harry burst into laughter in the middle of yelling because the wrinkle Zayn gets between his eyebrows when he’s frustrated looks the same as when he’s about to come. The silence has never gone on past a day at most but this one only stretches on.

Harry assumed it would be nearly impossible to get through his shifts without running into Zayn at some point; of course he’s being proved wrong one day at a time. He almost wishes they would see each other just so he could know if Zayn is planning to ignore him like he doesn’t exist or act like nothing ever happened between them beyond their friendship. He’s not sure which would hurt him more.

Each time he goes to check on Jax he wonders if Zayn will be there, goes so far as to hold his breath as he comes through the doorway. He never is. He barely manages to hide his shock, however, when he comes in one morning to a slew of fire engine balloons tied to the railing of Jax’s bed because he knows exactly who they’re from.

By the beginning of the next week, Harry realizes the amount of effort he and Zayn put into seeing each other when they weren’t working on the same surgical service. They manipulated their schedules and twisted their sleeping patterns just to spend time together. Harry never saw anything wrong with it but, in the more bitter moments, he realizes Zayn must have. Without the added effort of coming in early and dragging out breaks he finds it easy to avoid whoever he wants, Zayn included. When he reaches the five day mark of not seeing him at all, he knows Zayn must have figured that out too.

*

The first time he sees him is when they’re both paged to Jax’s room to test the results of the surgery. Harry knew he would be there as he approached the room but it still stings when he walks in the door to see Zayn marking something down on Jax’s file, looking the same as always with a headband pushing back his hair. Harry stands on the opposite side of Dr. Garcia and steadfastly avoids eye contact. If Zayn wants to be done with him, he can live up to that expectation even if his heart isn’t all the way on board with his plan.

The process of pulling Jax out of his coma is a slow one. They have to be careful that with each increment of consciousness they aren’t disrupting his healing process, monitoring each change diligently.

Harry bites his lip hard when Jax opens his eyes for the first time, a nurse giving him water through a straw as they slip the breathing tubes out of his nose. Dr. Garcia leans over and talks quietly to him, his mom grabbing onto his other hand. Fear circles over and over in Harry’s stomach, waiting for Dr. Garcia to stand back up. She does more tests, simple ones with lights and the monitors, asking Jax questions he answers slowly but clearly or with his hands. Harry feels the prick of tears in the back of his eyes when he notices Jax’s hands aren’t shaking and that he doesn’t have his glasses on but mirrors Dr. Garcia’s motions slowly. He has to look away and wipe at the corner of his eye before turning back. When he glances around he realizes he’s not the only one.

They did it. Dr. Garcia tells them so when the nurses start to give Jax more pain medication to get him back to sleep. “Long road still,” she says afterwards, but there’s a smile pulling at her lips. They’ve almost saved his life. Harry holds to that spark long after they leave the room, long after he draws out a conversation with Jax’s dad until he’s sure Zayn won’t be lingering in the hallways. He tries not to be upset when he does come out of Jax’s room and finds it to be true.

*

Harry throws himself into work, into his patients. He stays tuned in when he’s at the hospital never letting his mind drift far beyond each shift. He takes on extra time in the lab and he studies at night until his brain goes numb with it and he can sleep without letting any stray thoughts roll through. It’s not hard, at work, to not think about Zayn. Harry can’t wonder about him when he’s the one with a scalpel poised over skin. He can’t miss Zayn in the moments that a 911 page vibrates against his hip and sends him running down the hallways.

Harry misses him in the little spaces and when he can’t exhaust his mind enough not to. Maybe that says it all about the way he fit with Zayn--in all the little places they didn't notice until it was too late. The hip where his pager vibrates has the ghost of a bite from Zayn’s teeth and he watches another darker mark fade under his ear, slowly but surely until it’s gone completely. Zayn’s minion sweatshirt is draped over Harry’s beanbag; an extra toothbrush sits on his counter in the bathroom.

There’s sadness that unfurls during those in between moments. Heaviness to the idea that Harry is unwanted in Zayn’s life, no longer fits in the spaces he thought he did. That’s what confuses him most, sends a phantom shock through his system--he couldn’t stop this from happening. Zayn made up his mind and that was that. Zayn Malik is nothing if not meticulous, brilliant and determined but it means he’s stubborn--Harry’s known that as long as he’s known Zayn. He fell helplessly in love with that part of Zayn too but he just knows stubborn doesn’t backtrack, doesn’t change.

*

Somehow word gets around that they aren’t together or at least Louis and Liam seem to know. Harry’s not exactly sure how except that when Louis says Zayn’s name one day, Liam shoots him a look like he’s mortally offended. Harry doesn’t bother with reminding them that Zayn is their best friend, not to mention their co-worker, and he doesn’t actually expect them to never say his name again.

“I may have volunteered us for something,” Liam says one day at lunch. It’s been eighteen days since Harry has spoken to Zayn, a number he pretends to not be paying attention to. Liam and Louis have taken to separating at meals so one of them can sit with Harry, the other with Zayn. It’s all very middle school of them but Harry’s still not sure he can sit through a casual conversation with Zayn yet so he doesn’t push it.

“And what might that be?” Harry puts another California roll in his mouth chewing quickly. He should have known cafeteria sushi wouldn’t be satisfying.

“Do you remember how the interns are supposed to do projects to give back to the hospital?” Liam doesn’t pause for an answer, “One of those is a New Year’s Eve party for the pediatric ward and I volunteered for us to plan it.”

“Liam, you what?”

“It’s honestly not going to be hard and I figured you could use the distraction and don’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad.” Harry rolls his eyes, “There’s just a lot going on right now.”

“Like I said, I figured you might like a distraction.” Liam smiles slowly and Harry finds it near impossible to do anything but smile back—the power of Liam Payne.

Harry’s eyes shift to where Zayn is sitting across the cafeteria with Louis perched across from him. He briefly wonders if Louis is supposed to be distracting Zayn like Liam is doing for him, maybe party planning or therapeutic painting. The thought that makes his stomach twist is that Zayn doesn’t need another distraction at all.

“Maybe you should try talking to him.” Liam’s voice pulls Harry’s gaze back, “Instead of this looking longingly in the distance bull shit.”

“With who?” Harry smirks when Liam rolls his eyes.

“Really, Harry. You’re both miserable without each other.”

He looks back over towards Zayn, the way his head tilts back while he laughs. It reminds Harry of their first few days together before he got to see all of Zayn before he showed Zayn every part of him. It’s a nauseating full circle to not be able to figure out how speak to each other all over again.

“Liam, who was just awarded intern of the week for excellence in patient care and surgical technique?” Harry recites the qualifications of the award the Chief gave out this morning before rounds, the award Zayn received.

“You’re being petty.” He points at Harry with his fork.

“No, I promise you I’m not. I’m just saying he’s not miserable.” He points his fork back at Liam until he drops his. “Not that I’m miserable. I take offense to that, actually. I’m a joy to be around. “

“Winning awards doesn’t make you any more or less miserable,” Liam says without responding to Harry’s defense. He raises one eyebrow and strangely looks so much like Gemma that Harry has to turn away.

*

The next afternoon Harry is on his way to the on-call room on his split shift when he sees Zayn walking towards him. The hallway is empty besides the two of them and save for melting into the wall, he knows he’s going to have to say something--the sudden moment of truth he never expected to reach. Harry knows he can’t walk past him silently, nor ignore the fact he’s fallen asleep with his face pressed to Zayn’s neck just to smell his skin or that he still thinks about him every single day despite the face he tries to put on.

“Can I talk to you?”

Harry pauses when Zayn speaks first, the sound of his voice too familiar to his ears after so long of it just being a memory, a sound no longer directed at him. He doesn’t trust himself to speak yet so he nods instead. He follows Zayn into the on-call room but they back out when they see someone is already asleep in one of the bunks. They push into the room next door, an empty lab, instead.

Harry stays close by the door with his arms crossed over his chest. He’s automatically defensive though he’s not sure why. Zayn looks tired, dark circles that match Harry’s, as he runs his hands over his face. He drops them and then it’s silent.

“What did you want to talk about, Zayn?” Harry’s voice is stronger than he feels, more aggressive than he means but there’s something angry in his chest now. To be cast aside so carelessly has been nothing like easy for him to handle. Now standing in front of Zayn he feels a roll of anger, pushing the exhaustive sadness away for the moment.

“I want to talk about what happened, Harry, instead of treating each other like ghosts.” Zayn’s voice is even but he sounds tired.

“Well, you called me a distraction and now you haven’t talked me for almost three weeks. You’re the one who wanted this.”

“You haven’t talked to me either, Harry.” Zayn’s eyes go hard and then he shakes his head and restarts, “I thought we could do it, what we had. It just doesn’t work like I thought.”

Like a football game or a school play not their relationship and friendship--just _it._ “You couldn’t multi-task like you thought I get it. You had to choose me or surgery, you chose your career.”

“No. That’s not it.” Zayn runs his hands back through his hair. When he pushes it back Harry can see the subtle shine of one of his earrings.

Harry licks over his bottom lip but he’s already shaking his head, “Explain it to me, then, because that’s exactly what I’ve been thinking the past few weeks.”

“That night, in my apartment,” Harry scoffs as if he needs a reminder but Zayn pushes forward, “You said, I don’t care enough about you, surgery is too important.”

“From your mouth to my ears.” Harry points between them, a flare of pride at holding strong when he wants nothing more than to beg Zayn to re-think everything he said.

“You were wrong. I do care too much about surgery, I know. It’s a lonely path to take to get too wrapped up in a career just because I love it this much. I can’t give it up and I wont.”

He runs his hand over his face and Harry wonders if that was all he wanted to say. If he just needed to reiterate how much surgery means compared to Harry. He bites the inside of his cheek.

“But I care too much about you, too. You make me feel like someone has unleashed my heart for the first time, like you’ve unlocked some cage I’ve built around it so I wouldn't have to worry about feeling anything too much.” He presses his hand to his chest and Harry keeps his face blank, “But that first part of me, the part that doesn’t give up on surgeries, that wants to be successful and untouchable in the OR, that part of me is never going away.”

Harry throws his hands in the air. “I didn’t ask it to. I would never have asked you to give any part of that up. I wouldn’t give up surgery for anything--it’s who we both are. Why don’t you see that I get that? Fuck, I was coming over that night because I just wanted to be around you. You could have studied until the fucking sun came up and I wouldn’t have tried to stop you.” He hears his voice getting louder and he takes a deep breath. “I didn’t want to be alone because I get stressed out too. I get scared about being able to save people too. No one handles it the right way but that doesn’t give you an excuse to be shitty about it.”

“I would never choose between you and surgery, Harry. It’s two completely different things, you mean something else to me.” Harry jeers and rolls his eyes but it doesn’t deter Zayn. “I swear to you. I wouldn’t just choose surgery over you. You’re not the same thing, the same category, as my career. I just—I can’t be the one to make you happy. Not if I’m constantly working or thinking about work, stressing over the things I can’t control. That’s who I am though, and I won’t drag you down that path when I know you’re too good to turn around on your own. Maybe in this case, yeah, I’m choosing surgery but it’s not because I wouldn’t choose you a thousand times over, if I could. I know what I said that night was terrible and maybe it came out all wrong but it's how I see it, who I am.”

Harry shakes his head to make him stop talking. All the times he thought he was helping Zayn, being there for him, Zayn assumed he was sacrificing himself. Like Zayn was some kind of head case that Harry tolerated not that they were on the same level all this time. It hurts almost as much as it makes Harry want to shake him and tell him how ridiculous he sounds.

“First off, Zayn,” Harry feels like there’s fault lines in his heart, like it might just physically start to break apart in his chest. “Don’t act like I pick flowers for a living. I’m a surgeon just like you are, I understand the pressure but I love that it’s so challenging. I love that it pushes me to get better. That’s something we have in common, in case you forgot where we fucking met.” He feels adrenaline pushing in his veins and he takes a deep breath before he ends up with watery eyes. He is not going to cry over the things he cannot change.

”Second,” he exhales through his teeth, “I wish you could understand that I wanted to be by your side. That I love that competitive spark you have and your drive about surgery. There’s this look you get in your eyes,” Harry pauses and shakes his head, it’s one of Zayn’s looks he doesn’t think he could articulate if he tried, “when you talk about cases or theories and you always have me on the edge of my seat. I would never ask you to pick surgery or to pick me. We have the same passion and, yeah, we wear it in different ways but I never wanted to change you.”

Harry’s eyes feel cloudy, his tongue heavy in his mouth, as he finishes, “I wanted to be with you for every little piece of you. Even the one’s you clearly don’t like. I love those ones too. And I wish you could understand how happy I was with you. If you were choosing my happiness you did it all wrong. Because I am fine, I am strong and whole and not broken and all those things, Zayn but without you I’m not as happy.”

Harry’s chest is heaving as he stares at Zayn, his hand pressed to his heart while Zayn presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. He pulls his hands away from his eyes to meet Harry’s, green on hazel--the silence feels fleeting. Zayn shifts, he’s going to say something, Harry can almost hear it before it comes and then, instead, a high pitched beeping sound pierces the room, a red flashing light glows on Harry’s hip.

It turns out life still doesn’t stop for anyone to catch their breath or gather their thoughts, in a hospital least of all. Harry bites his tongue and turns away from Zayn, yet again, with silence between them. He has lives to save and hearts to fix even when he’s not sure he even knows how to fix his own.

The page is for one of Harry’s patients on the long-term transplant list whose enlarged heart has decided to be done working mere days before he gets to the top of the list. In the panic of the operating room, the crash carts and yelling he forgets about Zayn all together, grabbing the man on the gurney’s hand and promising him everything will be okay. Promising him when he knows damn well he’s not supposed to make promises he can’t keep--but he just needs something to go right.

The funny thing about hearts is that they break in ways no one can see. When Harry has his eyes on the patient’s heart on the operating table, the bright reds and deep purpling of the veins, it looks functional, healthy even. The problem, though, is still fatal; it’s in the ways the valves move, they let in more blood than they push out essentially drowning the heart. One valve functioning incorrectly is one thing, all four is another. When the patient is in surgery and they’re tying to save him, he surges to the top of the transplant list. If they can get him to hold on and someone else dies in the same period of time, he gets a new heart. Harry has his finger over the aortic valve when the phone rings, an old dial phone they still have in some of the operating rooms that contrasts drastically with the tools and technology surrounding them.

One of the nurses answers on the second ring, the machines beep in echoes in the space between her answer and the reply on the phone. She calls over the surgeon and hands him the phone. Harry knows he has blood splatter on the front of his mask as he shifts his finger over the valve. He can’t hear the surgeon until he turns around, “Keep him holding on, we can get a heart here within in the hour.”

The irony of it all, of a too big heart that won't work, of someone dying so another can live, almost makes Harry throw up but he doesn’t lift his finger from that valve. He made a promise and he’s going to keep it.

*

Christmas comes in a depressing flurry as none of the interns are with their families and, as Dr. Charles tells them, emergencies don’t take breaks for the holidays so they won’t either. Louis shows up at Harry’s apartment with a to-do list of party planning things from Liam and greasy hamburgers from down the street.

“Liam is with Zayn,” Louis says from the beanbag while he watches Harry piece together the invitations to the party for all the patients on the pediatric floor.

Harry looks up at him and shrugs before looking back down.

He’s not in the mood to talk about Zayn. Mostly because he realized this morning that he doesn’t know what Zayn does on Christmas. They stayed up all night last month as Zayn explained being Muslim and answered all of Harry’s questions patiently. But Harry never asked what they do on Christmas, instead. If his family gets a tree for fun, if they go on a tropical vacation or eat Chinese food in their pajamas. It’s not the end of the world that he doesn’t know and he hates that he even wants an answer. He explained it to Niall over video chat that morning but Niall just thinks he should call and ask Zayn instead of wondering. Harry tells him he doesn’t get it.

“I just wanted to mention it in case you wanted them to come help us make invitations,” Louis continues, hardly phased. He puts three fries in his mouth at once.

“I don’t.” Harry puts the lid on his glue stick, “But if you want to get down here and help, you’re more than welcome.”

Louis’ laugh is loud and bright in the apartment but he doesn’t make any moves to get off the beanbag.

*

The day of Jax’s final surgery comes the same day as snow begins to fall. Harry watches out his window as it covers the streets and he takes pictures like a little kid, posting them to Instagram in black and white and sending them to his friends back home. He’s trying to let himself be excited by the little things again instead of sinking into the heavy sadness of missing Zayn. Worse than losing his boyfriend was losing his best friend though Louis and Liam try to keep him on his toes.

Harry gets to Jax’s room to prep him for surgery a few hours later and sees Zayn already there, helping the nurses with sedatives. “Good morning everyone,” Harry says all around the room without letting his eyes land anywhere in particular. “Did you know it’s snowing, Jax?” He points out the window and Jax follows his finger with his gaze.

“Dr. Harry. Of course I did.” Jax shakes his head like he can’t believe Harry asked but then he’s smiling so Harry doesn’t care.

Harry hits his forehead with his hand, “I forget how good your eyes are now.”

“Did you know that after this last surgery and chemo I’m going to go visit a firehouse and ride in a fire truck?” Jax asks holding his arm out for Zayn to take his blood pressure. Harry doesn’t look anywhere but at his eyes, remembering the idea from their socialization plan for him before his first procedure. He had lost track of the idea with everything else going on.

“Really?”

“Yep. Dr. Zayn says all the hospital is organizing it for me.” He grins up at Zayn then and Harry knows he’s going to have to look at Zayn too.

“That was very nice of him,” Harry says, looking at his lips rather than his eyes. As if that has ever been the safer choice.

“Dr. Harry helped me come with the idea,” Zayn says looking back at Jax. Harry hates how they aren’t even talking to each other. Both in a conversation and talking like the other one isn’t there.

Harry swallows hard. “Do you think they’ll let you turn on the lights and the siren, Mr. Jaxson?”

He must not have considered the possibility because he talks about how cool that would be all the way down to the OR until Zayn has him count backwards from one-hundred and the anesthesia kicks in.

The third procedure takes the least amount of time with none of the unstoppable panic from the second phase. Dr. Garcia has Harry and Zayn each resect part of the tumor and the satisfaction sits heavy in Harry’s stomach as he sets his piece on the tray. Good people deserve good things and as he watches Zayn takes out the last piece, he feels a wave of emotion bubbling up. As far as good people go, Jax is one of the best.

Harry finishes the sutures between the staples in the end, the fourth line of them to be put in his head. The first line from the initial procedure has already disintegrated leaving an angry pink scar instead. Jax’s hair will eventually grow back and the scars will be his own reminder of the fight he’s had and, after one more round of chemotherapy, the fight he will have won. Zayn reaches over to cut the last bit of thread after Harry ties it off and he whispers, “Thank you,” as he takes a step back.

They take Jax back to his room and tell his parents how well the procedure went. “We’ll know more when he wake up,” Dr. Garcia says, “But I think he’s going to be just fine.” There’s a lot of hugging after that but Harry ducks out of the room as soon as he can. It’s like he’s been hanging by a string since he met Jax, constantly waiting for something to go wrong but it never did.

He feels an unhinging in his chest, pressure on his heart, as he ducks into the stair well; a choked sob making it’s way up through his lips and breaking against the air. He leans back against the wall with his eyes closed trying to steady his breathing. Being a surgeon isn’t easy and it hurts a lot of the times but when it’s good, it’s so good. He swallows over a thick lump in his throat and savors the moment. Maybe the first real moment that he knows why he goes through any of this at all.

*

The day before New Year’s Eve, Liam and Harry set up the children’s ward for the dance while some of the patients come to help them hang streamers and paint signs for decorations. There’s palpable excitement in the air and it makes the entire floor feel warm. Jax even came out in a wheel chair to watch before he had to go back to rest. He’s still healing from his his procedures but he likes to ride in his wheel chair and pretend it’s a fire engine.

“Do you think we need more fairy lights?” Liam asks, securing a shimmery gold streamer to the wall. Harry is holding his ladder with a patient named Lily on his hip. Lily is undergoing treatment for lymphoma but she’s been attached to Harry all evening. She’s only said two words directly to him so far but her mom says she talks about the doctor with the long hair like a prince when he’s not around.

“I feel like we might blow a fuse eventually,” Harry smirks glancing around at all the lights they’ve hung already. “Lily, what do you think?” She shrugs her little shoulders and kicks her foot against his hip.

“Lily thinks we need more,” Liam climbs back off the ladder and pets over her short hair before getting a silver streamer from the pile on the floor.

“When in doubt, add more lights. That’s my life motto,” Harry says with a grin. He bounces Lily on his hip but she doesn’t even crack a smile.

“Her mom says she talks about a prince with long hair but I’m pretty sure she means Zayn and not you,” Liam says, taking a step up the ladder. “The Aladdin vibes are unreal.”

Harry drops his mouth open and stares at Lily, “Do you like Zayn more than me?”

“Zayn.” She softly says his name and tangles her hand in the bottom of his scrub top.

“I can’t believe this betrayal,” Harry says with wide eyes as Liam cackles.

“Zayn, Zayn, Zayn,” Lily chants against his shoulder and Harry can’t help but laugh right along with Liam. Go figure.

After the room is as decorated as they can get it and the tables are set up with space for a DJ, Harry returns Lily to her room. Her mom says she has a dose of chemo in the morning but she plans to be at the party in the evening.

“Do you promise?” Harry bends down and offers his pinky to Lily. She links hers with his along with a small smile. “Okay, good.” He’ll make sure to tell Zayn to dance with her or if his pride gets in the way then he’ll send Louis or Liam to tell him.

He heads up to the rooftop once he checks out of his shift.

The air is cold hitting him in a rush as soon as he pushes open the side door. He wore his coat and his beanie but he forgot his gloves so he shoves his hands in his pockets. He stands up towards the edge looking out over the city. There are still some Christmas lights up on the buildings, white lights twisted in the bare trees below to get ready for the New Year. It’s still early enough in the night for the city to glow before everyone goes to sleep. It’s breathtaking even as his breath comes out in soft puffs he can see against the cold. The snow isn’t as thick as it was at Christmas just little slush patches now more than anything.

“You shouldn’t stand so close to the edge.”

Harry jumps at the smooth voice, the lilt he recognizes instantly. “You shouldn’t come up behind people when they’re standing on roofs.” He puts his hand over his heart as he faces Zayn sure he can feel the intense thudding through his layers.

“Touché.” He has a grey beanie pulled down over his ears and a big blue jacket with his scrub pants on still.

“I didn’t hear you come up,” Harry says. He keeps his tone light because he won’t fight Zayn’s decision again. He can’t take another letdown after all but begging, again.

“I was already here,” he half smiles and gestures back over to the spot they usually sit where Harry can see a book with the pages face down in the dull light from the hospital windows.

“I see.” Harry nods, a sudden itch to fill the silence pricking in his throat.

“I actually was meaning to ask you something.” He shoves his hands in his pockets, “I know you’ve been planning the New Year’s Eve thing with Liam, and I,” he rubs at his beard, it’s growing in the way Harry likes it most, “I was wondering if you would want to go with me? Like as my date.” His voice is soft, like when he used to talk Harry in the fragile time between midnight and dawn intertwined under warm bed sheets.

“Zayn.” Harry doesn’t know what to say after his name so he shakes his head instead. He knows they should be friends but he still doesn’t know how.

“One of the first times we really talked,” Zayn moves to stand next to Harry so their shoulders brush, his voice louder and stronger. Harry can’t look at him so he stares straight ahead. “We were up on this roof and you told me you thought I was a robot when we first met. A gorgeous robot or something along those lines.” He laughs lightly but Harry can’t find the directives to get his mouth to do the same. “I’ve spent a long time buckling things down and planning so things will end up a certain way. I’m a perfectionist and, a flaw as it may be, it’s gotten me a lot of places.”

“Zayn, I’m sorry, I don’t really know what you want to get out of this.” Harry stops him before he goes on, looks over at him finally only to see Zayn staring back. He bites the inside of his cheek when Zayn looks away from him and back out over the city.

“I don’t want to be a robot, too focused on my career that I forget there’s so much more around me. I’ve been so used to doing things on my own and holding things inside of me for a long time. I’ve always been lucky enough to know what I want and how to get it. Then you came out of nowhere with your adventure philosophy and you say things the way they are and you talk in circles until you can get your head straight. And, fuck, Harry, I was gone for you from the day you smiled at me when I came out of the locker room and every day since.”

“Zayn, please don’t.” It’s the third time Harry has said his name since he started talking but it’s all he’s got. He can’t do this, this long drawn out re-explanation of why he loves Harry but can’t be with him. It hurts too much.

“What I’m saying is that I thought I could do this alone the way I’ve done everything else. I know I could do it alone, I know what I’m capable of. But, even knowing that, I still need you, Harry.”

Harry looks over at Zayn and huffs out another breath when he sees him looking back at him. His eyes sparkle in the light casting off the building just like the night behind the bar when Harry thought he might disappear if he couldn’t kiss him.

“I thought I could do this alone. And I can.” Zayn repeats. He breathes out with pursed lips and it’s then Harry notices his chin has gone slightly wobbly. “But I don’t want to do this alone. I want you back.”

Harry feels an ache to reach for him but he pushes it down. His eyes search over Zayn’s face and Zayn must be able to read the confusion because he swallows and scratches at his jaw again before speaking.

“You know, I can hardly focus knowing that you’re not happy.” Zayn rolls his eyes but Harry thinks it must be more at himself than at Harry. “It’s worse because I know I’m the one who made it like that. And, I mean, part of it was stress and being so fucking scared about Jax’s surgery. It’s still not an excuse.” He pauses and takes a deep breath in, “I think a lot of what I did, most of it, was me being selfish. I assumed I knew what would make you happy and decided it would be without me, without ever asking you about it. You wear your emotions on your sleeve, just like you told me when I asked about your tattoo, and I would have known if you weren’t truly happy if I was paying attention. I should have known that you were.”

Harry nods, his lip caught under his teeth. He doesn’t trust his voice.

“I didn’t see it then, babe. I honestly thought I was doing the right thing.”

“You broke my heart,” Harry says. His voice cracks in the middle but he clears his throat to cover it.

Zayn makes a noise that sounds strangled in his throat before he shakes his head. “I broke my own heart. I made us miserable because I thought I was saving you from something you didn’t need or want to be saved from.”

“Some superhero you are.” Harry tries to keep his tone light again but his throat is too thick with emotion to pretend.

“Babe,” Zayn steps closer to him, so close Harry can see the freckle in his eye. “I need you because you see the parts of me I like to hide and the ones I don’t want to—and you love them all the same even if I don't understand. More than that, I want you because you’re smart and charming. You see the best in people and you tell terrible jokes,” he pauses when Harry smiles slightly. “I can’t keep pretending that walking away from you was a good idea for either of us. It was awful. The worst decision I’ve made to date. I need you, Harry. Want you. All of the above.”

Harry has ten things he wants to do, not least of which is push Zayn away for waltzing towards him on a rooftop with sweet words and a shiver inducing smirk. But in that moment the only thing he can think of with clarity is that he loves Zayn Malik. He couldn’t stop if he tried.

“Took you long enough.” His words get a little choked but Zayn hears him all the same. He reaches for Harry’s face, holding him between his hands and pressing their foreheads together.

He sighs and the rush of air feels like a held breath, “I’m so sorry.” He kisses the corner of Harry’s lips and the words are whispered between them.

In a different world Harry is strong enough to withstand the softness of Zayn’s lips but, then again, going in halfway has never been in the cards for him. “I missed you, Zayn. I missed you so fucking much,” he whispers, his voice cracking under the weight of his emotion.

“Babe, come here.” Zayn wraps his arms around Harry and tugs him in until their pressed together fully. He has one hand tangled in the back of Harry’s hair, the other holding his neck as he presses kisses all along the line of his jaw. “I was an idiot for letting you go.” Zayn kisses him slowly, finally, full on the mouth. It’s gentle at first then his tongue is pressing against the seam of Harry’s lips, pushing them apart to trace inside his mouth. Harry sighs against the taste of Zayn on his tongue and the way his hands hold Harry’s face so easily, thumb running up over his cheekbone again and again.

“Maybe I should have tied you to a chair and not let you make decisions like that,” Harry says with a smirk bringing the first lift off of the perpetual weight in his stomach. He could have tied Zayn up but he still wouldn’t have changed his mind without time—he knows that; Zayn probably does too.

“Hey, I like that idea,” Zayn says, smiling against his lips before kissing Harry again, pressing his palm against his lower back just to push him closer. Harry pulls back first but only to tuck his face against Zayn’s neck, pressing a soft kiss and inhaling with Zayn’s arms tight around him.

“So about that dance?” Zayn says after a moment, running his hands up and down Harry’s back. “Come with me?” Harry doesn’t dignify him with a response just bites the side of his neck to muffle his laugh.

Zayn is working a double shift so he goes to the locker room with Harry while he changes and walks with him to the front door, pulling him aside before they push the doors open.

“Are you okay?” Harry studies Zayn’s face, his eyebrows pulling together.

“No, yeah,” Zayn shakes his head. “I just want to make sure we’re okay?” He plays with the button on the front of Harry’s coat but he doesn’t break eye contact.

“We will be,” Harry says, his mouth pulling up on one side. “I kept telling myself I was going to get over you but I think there was a bigger part of me that didn’t want to. Not to be a baby but I feel like I can do anything when I’m with you and if that’s not love then fuck if I know what is.”

Zayn laughs and it’s loud in the quiet lobby but Harry loves it, giggling a little hysterically himself. “Okay, good.” He nods, the traces of laugher still in his face, shining in his eyes. “Sleep tight, boo.”

And, god, Harry hates that nickname but hearing Zayn say it in his teasing tone, dragging out the syllable to sound like two, makes his heart beat double time. Harry kisses him once more and then he presses back out into the cold, his face down against the wind.

*

“Do you think I have to button all the buttons?” Harry turns towards Zayn with his shirt completely undone and his hands out to the side.

“You should definitely do some buttons,” Louis says as he walks past. He pokes Harry’s stomach, laughing when he squeaks.

“I like it,” Zayn says coming closer. The door to the locker room shuts drowning out Liam’s cackles. Harry bites his lip as Zayn slides his hands around his waist and presses a kiss over his heart. “But maybe button up a few just in case.” Harry scoffs but ducks his neck to kiss Zayn, tracing over his lips with the tip of his tongue.

His whole shift earlier had been spent putting finishing touches on the pediatric ward while Zayn slept off his overnight shift. His heart did weird somersaults when Zayn showed up at lunch with a smoothie for Harry and chapstick for keeping him out in the cold the night before.

He spares a glance towards Zayn now as he adjusts the stud in his nose before pulling on his combat boots where he sits on the bench. Harry finishes the buttons on his shirt, doing up one more than usual for the mixed crowd at the New Year’s Eve party.

“Are those new jeans?” Zayn drags his eyes up Harry’s legs.

Harry glances down at his black pants. “Mine ripped open last week so I had to get new ones. They’re a different brand so they’re kind of tight on my thighs.” Harry wiggles a bit, smirking when he hears Zayn groan.

“As if that would ever be a problem.” Harry smirks, he’s missed the tone of Zayn’s voice when he wants him--it goes a touch deeper and slower--sends chills up Harry’s spine every time.

Zayn bites his lip. “Turn please,” he spins his finger in a circle. Harry obliges, spinning in a slow circle and even moving his hips as he does just for Zayn. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about.” Zayn is nodding when Harry faces the front again, smiling so his eyes crinkle in the corners. He stands up just to wrap his arms low around Harry’s waist before he kisses him, sliding his hands down until he can grab Harry’s ass with both hands and make him groan against his lips. “I’ve missed you so much.”

Harry hums and bites on Zayn’s bottom lip before he sucks it into his mouth, pulling back to let it drag through his teeth just to watch his eyelashes flutter against his cheeks.

“We are not doing this right now.” Zayn takes a step back, hinging forward at the waist to kiss Harry’s lips one more time before straightening.

“Say what you will but just remember who grabbed whose ass first.” Harry turns to walk away and jumps in the air when Zayn lands a smack on his right cheek. “Oh, I’ll remember,” he says brushing past Harry and walking right next to him out of the locker room.

*

“Lily,” Harry kneels in front of her where she’s sitting next to the snack table. Her mom is standing right next to her, her hand on the back of Lily’s chair. “I’m so happy you’re here.”

She shrugs her shoulders and her mom runs her hand back through her hair. “She’s pretty tired from chemo today but the nurses thought it would be good if she came by for a little bit.”

Harry nods and focuses back on Lily. “I really like your gown,” he says pointing at the dark pink covered in yellow dinosaurs. He and Liam had gone around earlier and let each patient pick out a special hospital gown to wear to the dance. Some of them didn’t care, others had Harry sit on the edge of their beds and flip through the gowns like swatches for a wedding dress.

“Thanks,” Lily says with a slight smile.

“If you want, you can come with me. I have someone who wants to dance with you.”

“Zayn?” Her eyes go wide and Harry bites his lip over a smile.

“You’ll have to wait and see,” he says, winking behind her at her mom.

“Okay.” She pushes up out of the chair and Harry catches one of her hands to steady her.

“You want to walk?” He asks and she nods. “All right.” He takes her around the edge of the floor and away from the break dancing competition in the middle. One of the nurses is looking over the two boys competing with a slightly frantic face. It’s a good night to let the patients have fun but making their injuries and illnesses worse has never been the objective.

“Zaynie,” Harry calls as soon as they’re close enough. Zayn is sitting with Jax’s mom by one of the windows. Jax wasn’t able to get out of bed to come down to the party but Harry promised him he would come see him during. Zayn excuses himself to go over to Harry and Lily.

He doesn’t spare Harry a glance, going right down to his knee in front of Lily. “Hi, love,” he says with a slow smile. “You must be Lily.”

“I am,” she says in a strong voice that Harry hasn’t heard her use. She offers her hand and he takes it easily, lifting it to brush against his lips for the quickest moment like a real prince. Zayn even looks the part with his hair down around his face and his eyelashes dancing across his cheekbones.

“Would you want to dance with me?” Zayn grins when she nods back emphatically yes.

“Tell Dr. Zayn if you get too tired and want to stop, okay?”

She gives Harry a quick nod and Zayn gives him a knowing look before he grabs her other hand and helps her up onto his toes to sway around the dance floor. Harry watches them for just a moment, Zayn leaning down to say something and Lily’s head falling back as she laughs. Her mom has moved from her corner and is taking pictures of them from the outer edge of the floor.

Eventually he wanders back towards where Jax’s mom had been but finds the bench empty. He checks the time and heads towards Jax’s room, one that will be his for at least a another month longer while he finishes treatment and recovers fully.

The light is off in his room when he gets there besides one little lamp on next to Jax’s bed. He’s sitting up with a picture book on his lap. He’s taken to going through books to keep busy though he’s not supposed to stimulate his brain too much while he’s still healing from such major surgeries. Harry steps in the room to see his parents pulling on their coats in the corner.

“Harry, how are you?” Jax’s mom crosses the room first to wrap Harry in a tight hug.

“I’m doing good, thanks.” He pulls back with a smile, “Just wanted to stop by.”

“We’re heading out,” Jax’s dad comes over to shake his hand, “We don’t want to fight the party traffic later.”

“Make sense,” Harry says dropping his hand and glancing over to see Jax hasn’t looked up from his book. “I’ll probably hang with J a little bit, at least until he falls asleep.”

They both smile at him and tell him he’s a good kid; he doesn’t take the time to tell him he’s closer to thirty than he is to being a kid these days. Once they leave he pulls up a chair next to Jax’s bed settling next to him.

“Hey, man.” Harry offers his fist and Jax bumps it with half a smile.

“Hi, Harry.” Harry knows the logical next question is to ask him how he feels but he also knows how many people come in and out of his room each day with that question on the tip of their tongues. “I’ve been thinking about your fire station visit,” he says instead. “Are you excited for it?”

Jax nods and his smile only gets bigger. “Not until June though, right?”

“Yeah, a few more months.” Harry has a to-do list a mile long to get all of the correct clearances to set it all up. “What do you think you’ll do first when you get there? When you can do anything in the whole firehouse?”

Jax pauses to consider, folding his hands in his lap. “Slide down the big pole in the middle,” he says all at once. Before Harry can even ask him what else he starts listing everything else he can think of and he doesn’t stop smiling throughout the entire list. Not until his words get slower and his eyes start to droop, at least.

Zayn wanders into the room some time later with a, “I figured you’d be here,” before lowering his voice when he sees Jax is passed out in the bed.

“His parents were leaving,” Harry whispers as Zayn gets closer. “Thought he could use some company.”

Zayn nods his eyes roaming over Jax’s head, all of the slowly healing wounds before his eyes land on Harry. “He’s such a good kid,” he says softly. “I was so scared that last surgery. So fucking scared.”

He nods and reaches across the bed for Zayn’s hand. One day he’ll tell Zayn how scared he was and the tears he broke into afterwards, the bubble of relief that finally popped in him. “How was dancing?”

Zayn moves around to his side of the bed without letting go of his hand. “It was really nice,” he says, rubbing circles against Harry’s skin with his thumb. “She wouldn’t let go of me even when she fell asleep on my shoulder.” His nose crinkles when he smiles at that and Harry almost wishes he could have seen it in person. “Her mom said she couldn’t bear to take her back to her room when she was having so much fun.”

“Good,” Harry grins, presses his lips to Zayn’s wrist. “I’m glad she got to dance with her prince.”

Zayn rolls his eyes but he tugs Harry up out of his chair anyway, holding his hand as they walk back into the hallway. “Thanks for making it happen.”

Harry smiles, leaning forward to kiss the corner of Zayn’s lips. “Can we please go back to your place now?”

Zayn is grinning when he pulls back, “Of course we can. We should probably make sure Liam and Louis have everything under control out there first, though.”

Harry nods and starts to pull Zayn back towards the main room but not before pulling him in for a hard kiss, licking the seam of his lips and rolling his hips forward.

Louis and Liam are busy leading the remaining kids in a rendition of the Macarena when Harry and Zayn find them. Harry tells them he’s leaving with Zayn and neither seems inclined to stop them. Louis goes so far to catcall after them as they walk away but when Harry glances back it’s to Liam covering Louis’ mouth with his hand.

“So, I may have predicted we’d end up back here and bought some New Year’s Eve things,” Zayn says when the stop outside of his door.

The walk was cold and they stayed close together as people moved all around them, heading to parties or already going home. Harry raises an eyebrow with no idea what kind of New Year things can even be purchased.

“Like, champagne. I basically bought us champagne,” he says with a laugh, squeezing Harry’s hand in his. The apartment next door to Zayn’s is all but vibrating with music sneaking out under the door, the low roll of people talking and yelling barely making it over the bass.

“Bit presumptive, eh, Malik?” Harry laughs while Zayn opens the door.

“I might know a thing or two about how to push your buttons.” He pushes the door open and letting Harry walk past before closing it behind him.

“Hey,” Harry points at him, “My buttons may have changed and you wouldn’t even know.” Zayn raises his eyebrows and Harry winces. “Too soon for break up jokes?”

“You can make all the jokes you want as long as you’ll still be mine,” Zayn says bending down to untie his combat boots.

“Oh! Call up Hallmark, we have a new greeting card,” Harry yells out as he takes off his boots. Zayn shoots him a look from the floor and he giggles. “I’m kidding. I love you, you know? No getting rid of me now.”

Zayn smiles slowly,"Good."

“You know, I thought it might be weird after everything that happened to be here again,” Harry says, swallowing. “But I don’t want that for us. I know things don't just click back into place like a puzzle and it might be hard but we aren't going to be awkward about it, okay? So, just no being weird, I guess.

Zayn pushes up off the floor and crowds Harry back against the wall, his palms going flat against the wall to cage him in. “No being weird. Promise.” He kisses Harry hard then, his head knocking back against the wall in a dull thud. “Shit,” Zayn slides one hand to the back of Harry’s head, kissing him again as he massages it lightly. “You okay?”

“Good job not being weird but you broke my brain,” Harry says against his lips, his hands coming down to Zayn’s waist to pull him in against him. “Better make it up to me.”

Zayn hums as he moves from Harry’s lips down his jaw and to his neck. Harry’s fingers curl against him with each broad stroke of his tongue and sharp bite of his teeth as Zayn goes lower.

“Wanna taste you,” Zayn whispers as he starts unbuttoning Harry’s shirt, lips following down the center of his stomach. He pulls Harry’s shirt apart fully when he gets the last button undone. “Fuck I missed this,” he whispers against Harry’s skin, circling his tongue around his nipples and kissing a steady line down to the light hair leading into his jeans.

Harry watches through hooded eyes as Zayn drops to the floor in front of him. He drags his nose over the edge of his jeans before he unbuttons them and Harry’s head falls back again. Zayn tugs his boxers and jeans down to mid thigh, pressing a kiss to Harry’s tattoo, before licking a line straight up his dick. He isn’t sure if he hears it exactly right when Zayn breathes, “Gorgeous,” against him before wrapping him in his lips pressing so far forward his throat flutters around Harry’s cock. Harry’s hands start shaking with pleasure and he fists them at his sides, bending his neck forward to watch Zayn. Zayn pulls off and doesn’t break eye contact with him as he strokes him with his hand and circles Harry’s tip with his tongue before he takes him in again, groaning and sending vibrations up Harry’s body.

Harry whispers a string of profanities slurred together when Zayn presses his hips back against the wall with his hand and groans around his length. Zayn’s hands slide down to Harry’s ass, squeezing him with both hands and dropping lower to press at the sensitive skin behind his balls. Harry feels like fire rips through him as soon as Zayn does, his hips bucking forward and his jaw dropping open in a silent yell. Zayn does it again, presses two fingers a little firmer, and Harry spills down his throat, low strangled sounds barely making it out of his lips. Zayn swallows around him and sucks lightly until Harry pulls at his hair and then he’s sliding back up Harry’s body.

He places kisses all along his torso as he moves up before kissing his mouth, slowly. Harry draws Zayn’s tongue in his mouth, tasting himself mixed with Zayn. He’s missed this so much. He’s missed Zayn.

“You still have one boot on,” Zayn says with one more kiss against Harry’s chin and a pointed look down at the floor. Harry follows his gaze, his face flushed and breathing still slightly uneven.

“Because you ambushed me with your tongue.” He bends down to slide the boot off but slips forward with his knees still constricted by his tugged down jeans. He sprawls flat against the floor on his stomach with Zayn stepping out of the way just in time. He folds in half with laughter as Harry squirms around on the floor.

“Oh my god,” Harry pants as he pulls up his boxers and kicks his jeans off the rest of the way. Zayn tries to say something but it’s lost by his laughter again as Harry pouts up at him from where he’s still laying on his back the floor.

“I don’t know how I ever found you,” a smile plays at Zayn’s lips, “but, fuck, I’m happy I did.”

Harry tries to pout again but he starts laughing instead getting up on his knees and walking over to Zayn. He lifts his shirt from his stomach and presses a kiss to the heart on his hip, before nosing along the waistband of his pants. “We should go to bed,” he murmurs against Zayn’s stomach, hooking one finger in his belt loops and pulling slightly.

“Yeah, okay.” Zayn breathes the words, his hand petting back Harry’s hair as he sucks a mark near the _don’t think I wont_ inked on Zayn's other hip.

Harry pulls back to inspect his work, pressing on the reddening mark with a smirk. “I feel like you might have promised me champagne, too.” He tips his head back and let’s Zayn trace over his lips with his fingertip.

Zayn nods, bending forward to kiss Harry. “You get on the bed, I’ll get it.”

Harry hums, standing up. There’s a sudden cheer from the apartment next to them, louder than it has been since they walked in.

“Is it midnight already?” Harry grabs for his phone in his jeans but Zayn beats him to it, since his pants are still on, reaching in his pocket.

“It is,” he flips the screen around to show Harry. He doesn’t register the time but, instead, the picture as the lock screen of Harry trying to balance a spoon on his nose with his face almost completely overtaken by his grin instead.

“Well, let me kiss you, then,” Harry demands crossing the floor. He grabs Zayn’s face between his hands and kisses him slowly, teasing his mouth open to deepen it. “Happy New Year, babe.”

“You too,” Zayn says against his lips. He cups Harry through his boxers, delicious pressure against his sensitive cock, “Now, let’s celebrate it.”

“Yes, let’s.” Harry manages to jump and click his heels together as he dashes for the bed, careful not to trip as Zayn goes into the kitchen. He launches forward onto the bed lying flat on his back right as the shrill sound of Zayn’s phone ringing breaks through the otherwise quiet space.

“Shit, it’s Safaa,” Zayn calls over the sound of the fridge closing and a bottle clanking against something. “She always calls me on New Year’s Eve I just didn’t think she would this year because of the time difference.”

“Well, answer, you boob.” Harry calls back to him, laughing.

“Still calling me boob, I see.” Harry sticks his tongue out even though Zayn can’t see it. Zayn crosses the floor towards the bed as he answers the call, two cups in his hand and a bottle of champagne tucked under his arm. He pulls his phone back away from his ear when whatever comes across the line is louder than he expected.

Harry sits up reaching for the champagne as Zayn starts talking but Zayn shakes his head at him. He crawls up so he’s straddling Harry’s hips as he talks, winking at him when he rolls his hips forward slightly. Harry bites his lip and shakes his head, not planning to engage in any funny business while Zayn’s on the phone with his sister.

He takes the champagne from under Zayn’s arm and undoes the foil on top. Zayn smirks when he starts undoing the wiring around it holding his breath for the inevitable pop of the cork. Zayn presses his hand to the top of it to aim it away from his face with a stern look and Harry leans forward to kiss his jaw as an apology. He really wasn’t planning to shoot Zayn’s face off with a champagne cork. The cork finally pops and scares them both, jumping against each other as it ricochets across the room.

“No, there’s not a shooting. I’m in my apartment, Saf.” Zayn rolls his eyes and flicks Harry’s neck when he starts laughing. Harry licks up the foam spilling over the side of the bottle just to see Zayn’s eyes go dark. Zayn keeps talking on the phone as he cards his fingers back through Harry’s hair watching as he pours champagne in the glasses. He sets the bottle on the nightstand.

“Cheers,” he mouths handing one cup to Zayn and kissing the corner of his mouth while he hums along with something his sister is saying.

“No, Saf, babe, I have to—Okay, fine, put her on.” Zayn shakes his head and mouths, “My mom,” while he points at the phone. Harry nods—just three nights ago his mom called him and passed the phone around an entire roomful of people. Of course, then, he didn’t have his boyfriend on his lap who he hasn’t properly been with in nearly a month, so.

It starts out innocently enough while Zayn listens to his mom; Harry taking Zayn’s empty cup and setting it with his on the nightstand next to the champagne bottle. Listening to Zayn talk is soothing, his smooth voice punctuated by short bursts of laughter at whatever his mom says. Harry doesn’t feel guilty when he puts his hands under Zayn’s shirt and runs his fingertips up his sides, over the smooth muscles of his stomach. Zayn watches him while he does it and doesn’t stop him when Harry presses his face to his neck. He inhales Zayn skin because he can and then he starts kissing along his throat, sucking a mark on the soft skin under his ear while Zayn's hands tighten in his hair.

He doesn’t stop, shifting only slightly to start another mark under the first but Zayn starts laughing and crawls off of him. Harry pouts until Zayn lies down next to him instead and he pounces on the opportunity, straddling Zayn's hips just like Zayn had been doing to him.

“Mom, I really have to go,” Zayn says, tracing the inked lines on Harry’s bare thigh. “Because I have important things to do. Really? Okay, yeah, I will. Just real quick okay?”

“I want to ride you,” Harry whispers just as the next person comes on the line and Zayn puts his hand over his eyes and lets his head fall back against the pillow.

“Hi, Auntie Dee, how are you?”

Harry drops his head back and starts circling his own nipples with his fingertips until Zayn throws a stray pillow at him and he pouts instead. He must miss the next phone exchange because suddenly Zayn’s voice changes less from talking to his aunt and more to talking to a friend.

“Hey, man. What’s up?”

Harry tilts his head at Zayn’s voice and mouths, “Jawaad?” He’s Zayn’s younger cousin who he’s close with, Harry met him on Skype once along with way too many other extended family members to properly keep track of. Zayn nods.

Harry rolls his hips forward to grind down on Zayn when he starts to wonder if Zayn is drawing out the conversation longer just to be a tease. He knows he’s guessed right when Zayn grins and asks his cousin about what he had for dinner. Harry shakes his head pushing Zayn’s shirt up as he does. Harry rucks it up under his arms and twirls his tongue around his nipples before nipping down his stomach and undoing his jeans while he listens to him talk. He can play whatever game this is as good as Zayn can especially when he's not talking to his mother or sisters anymore. Everyone else is fair game, he decides.

His mouth follows the band Zayn’s boxers and jeans as he pulls them halfway off, leaves his cock pink and wet at the tip against his belly. Harry grins against his thigh at the sight and Zayn reaches down to pull his hair just on the right side of hard. Harry shakes him off and pulls his pants all the way off tossing them off the end of the bed.

He crawls over Zayn and grabs the condoms and lube from his nightstand to speed things along and Zayn automatically starts talking faster on the phone. Harry honest to god giggles while he shimmies off his boxers and crawls back on Zayn’s lap, completely naked. The tipping point is when he undoes the cap on the lube, the quiet snap making Zayn stutter. “Gotta go, bye,” he yells into the phone tossing it off the bed after he makes sure it's hung up. He sits up and pulls his shirt the rest of the way over his head. “You’re a fucking brat,” he says against Harry’s lips, kissing him and biting his bottom lip before collapsing back again.

“I didn’t realize you were planning to talk to everyone in your bloodline,” Harry laughs. He leans forward to kiss Zayn again, only the brief trace of champagne lingering between them.

“Thought you had something you wanted to do?” Zayn raises his eyebrows and puts his hands behind his head, expectantly.

Harry nods and picks the lube up again. He puts some over his fingers, rubbing them together to warm them up. He takes a deep breath and braces himself on Zayn’s stomach with one hand while he reaches behind himself.

“I can do it,” Zayn says right away, dropping his smug act and reaching for Harry’s arm.

Harry just shakes his head, groans at the press of his first finger.

“Oh, okay. Fuck.” Zayn’s eyes go wide as he watches Harry’s reactions, biting his lip at Harry’s rolling groan over the push of a second finger. He hasn’t done this to himself in a long time and his shoulder aches with the twist but Zayn’s dark eyes are more than enough to keep him going. Zayn drags his fingernails up and down Harry’s thigh as he works, leaning back into three fingers, his eyes fluttering at the full feeling.

“Condom,” he whispers to Zayn. He nods quickly, stroking himself and rolling one on. He finishes slicking himself up right as Harry pulls his hand back, wiping it on the sheets. “Ready,” he says, kissing Zayn’s neck and licking at the sweat already in the hollow of his throat just from watching.

“Want you,” Zayn whispers against his hair before he adjusts to sink two of his own fingers in Harry. Even with just two it feels better than Harry had done for himself and it punches a breathless moan through his lips. “Come on, babe,” Zayn directs, grabbing Harry’s hips and pulling him down slightly. He holds his dick while Harry settles on top of him both of them hissing at the same time when he sinks down.

Harry starts moving slowly at first, getting used to the feeling again. He nods when he finds his own rhythm, head dropping back out of it’s own volition when Zayn lifts his hips up to meet him, again, and again. Harry bounces on his knees, his stomach slick with sweat at holding himself up. Zayn’s hands are everywhere all at once, up over his stomach and his hips, down across his thighs.

“You’re so beautiful like this, Harry,” he whispers right as Harry has his hands in his own hair, pushing it back from his face. He looks down at Zayn and goes breathless for a reason different than Zayn’s hips circling under him. Zayn is looking up at him like Harry might have been the one to hang the moon in his spare time; his face flushed red but his eyes so soft.

“Shit,” Harry says. He slows down slightly wanting to take in the way Zayn looks under him with his eyes so full of something Harry can't place.

“What’s wrong?” Zayn draws a line against his inked ferns, catching on to Harry slowing down.

“I didn’t think,” Harry says on a choked off moan when Zayn hits up against his prostate. “I didn’t think,” he starts again, “We’d get this again. That I would get this again.” There’s a sudden and slightly unwelcome knot of emotion in his throat and he shakes his head to clear it, ineffectively.

“Babe, hey, hey.” Zayn sits up so their chests press together and kisses Harry’s throat when he groans at the adjustment. “Hey, I know.” He drags his hands over Harry’s side and settles on his lower back, Harry’s hair falling forward to shield them both.

“I just love you so much, you know?” Harry whispers, grinding slowly in Zayn’s lap, trying to control himself before he starts crying for no apparent reason. He has Zayn and he knows that, he doesn’t know why it’s hitting him so hard like this—of all times, too.

Zayn smiles and kisses him again, teasing Harry’s tongue into his mouth. “You’re everything, Harry. Everything.” He presses the words against Harry’s skin, again and again, kissing Harry’s chest as Harry pulls at his hair. The moment is fragile between them as Harry moves so slowly over him.

Zayn drops one hand down to where he’s coming in and out of Harry, presses a finger to his rim that makes Harry yell out, grabbing onto Zayn to hold himself up. The same hand comes back to his front, wrapping around his cock. “Oh, shit. Fuck. I’m gonna come.” Harry drops his head between them to watch, swallowing as he watches Zayn pull him off so slowly, thumbing over his head and slit in the lightest tease that makes him whine. Zayn pulls his knees up for leverage and Harry responds by tightening his abs and lifting up again and again.

“Come on, baby.” Zayn whispers against his neck followed by a soft bite. Harry’s body trembles as he comes but he keeps moving on Zayn, inarticulate sounds falling from his lips when he feels Zayn twitch inside of him.

Zayn falls back and Harry goes with them, their chests wet against each other as Harry kisses every bit of Zayn he can get to, his forehead, eyelids, a solid line along his jaw.

“Best orgasm of the year,” Zayn says when Harry’s panting against his neck, intermittent kisses between trying to catch his breath.

Harry sits up, scandalized, his eyebrows pulling together. “That was such a good joke and I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.”

Zayn grins, clearly proud of himself, “Learned from the best.”

“I’m gonna blow you in the shower for that one,” Harry says, climbing off of Zayn.

“Does that mean I have to get up and get in the shower?” Zayn points from himself to where the bathroom is.

“Yes, it does,” Harry calls over his shoulder already skipping away, his laughter ringing through the apartment.

***

One year after their very first day at Portland General and six months after Jax’s last surgery, the sun is finally shining again in Portland. There’s been seemingly endless rain since winter and the low heat coming through the cloud cover is a welcome change as they walk down the sidewalk in the middle of the city.

Zayn smiles as Liam, walking just in front of him, launches into a discussion of the case study he had on the final exam; he's evidently one of those people who leaves a test and automatically needs to talk about it out loud.

“Personally, I thought we were done with school after we took classes for twenty years and got a freaking medical degree,” Louis says loudly, talking over Liam. He had Jax’s case on the test and had bounded out of the testing room already telling the story to all of them before the door had even closed behind him.

Zayn squeezes Harry’s hand to get him to look over at him. “You okay?” He asks as Liam starts trying to talk over Louis with a loud, “Back to what I was just saying.”

“Excited,” he says back, biting his lip. He has his sunglasses pushed back over his hair, his eyes wide and perfectly green in the sunlight.

Zayn nods, smiling slowly. He knows the exact feeling.

Last night they were putting together Harry’s new dresser and they couldn’t stop talking about seeing Jax again. They haven’t seen him since he was discharged in February though he likes to send them cards and letters through the mail. He’s supposed to be practicing his writing to catch up on his schooling and he always sends along a drawing as well. Harry likes to put them up on his refrigerator like an overly proud parent. Zayn’s not sure why he thinks it’s so cute whenever Harry does.

“Is this it?” Louis points across the street to the red brick building with a huge banner welcoming Jax across the front and a fire engine parked out front.

“No, Lou. Why would you say that?” Harry rolls his eyes and pulls away from Zayn when Louis tries to hit him.

They get closer to see Jax’s parents already there, waving at all of them as they cross the street. There’s a small group of firefighters already outside and a smattering of Jax’s regular nurses who came by too. His parents latch onto all four of them as soon as they’re close enough, thanking them for coming and saying how much Jax has been looking forward to it.

“I’m pretty sure he wrote about this day in every letter he sent me,” Zayn says, pulling Jax’s dad in for a hug.

“Talked our ears off about it,” his dad says letting Zayn go and moving towards Harry. His voice is nothing but fond, though.

“Where is he?” Harry asks looking around right as the little boy comes tearing out of the fire station.

Zayn just barely squats in time to grab him as he comes flying at him. “Hey, little man,” he says as he catches him against his chest, one hand going up to his head the other around his waist. He’s still small for his age but his hair has grown back in dark curls, his blue eyes bright with excitement. “This is sick, huh?”

Jax pulls back and stutters all at once unsure of where to start out with how excited he is ending up with just shaking his head, a grin stretching across his lips.

“Dude, hey,” Harry says from off to the side, “Are you even going to talk to me?” Jax screeches as he runs into Harry’s arms and they all end up laughing when he does.

“We kept telling him we weren’t sure if you all would be able to come,” his mom says while her son climbs up Harry. “We thought it would be an even better surprise.”

“Think it worked.” Zayn smiles as Jax moves on to hug Liam and Louis, a little more subdued than his initial greeting to him and Harry.

“He looks good,” Harry says, smiling down at him. “You look good,” he repeats when Jax whips around to look at him. “Have you gone down the pole yet, J?”

“Not yet. I was waiting to see if you guys were coming,” he says looking around at all of them. He has glasses on now but they’re much thinner than his first pair. “Guess what,” he says suddenly, grabbing onto Zayn’s leg.

“What Jax?” He asks trying to match his enthusiasm.

“The dog that lives here, Rita,” he points back towards the firehouse, “she had babies and they’re looking for homes!”

“She did?” Zayn says at the same time Harry yells, “What?”

“Come on, I’ll show you,” he says grabbing onto Harry’s hand and running away already.

“Come on Zayn, Jax is going to show us Rita’s puppies,” Harry calls over his shoulder with a wink thrown in. “They’re for sale!”

“Wait, I want one,” Louis calls following after them.

Zayn purses his lips and follows after them, Jax’s parents and Liam in tow. Gemma got a French Bulldog last week and ever since they met little Otis on Skype, it seems like all Harry can or wants to talk about.

Zayn glances over his shoulder at one of the firefighters hooking up the huge hose to the fire hydrant out front and he smiles to himself; between the puppies, the pole, the truck and the hose, he’s not sure how Jax is going to last through the day.

He slows when they get closer to where Harry and Louis are sitting with Jax on a dark red blanket spread out on the ground. He’d expected to see a stereotypical firehouse Dalmatian not a blue Pitbull with six chubby, variegated babies toddling around her. Harry already has one cradled against his chest and he grins up at Zayn as soon as he sees him. It makes something in Zayn’s heart curl still, that smile he gets from Harry. Jax is pointing out each puppy that he’s named in the past two minutes as Zayn sits down next to Harry.

“He’s cute, huh?” Harry says quietly.

“Yeah,” Zayn says just as quietly, petting over him with two fingers. Harry purses his lips but he doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t really need to. “What would we do with him if we end up going abroad?” They’d both started talking about puppies jokingly but things had intensified over the last few days, their biggest con being the prospect of them traveling once their residency is up in a few years.

“I know,” Harry nods, pulling his lip between his teeth. They had both agreed they wouldn't want to give up a dog or have to put it in boarding if they left the country for half a year.

“I’d watch him,” Louis says out of the corner of his mouth, still looking at the puppy in his lap. “Liam would help.”

“Did you just say my name?” Liam asks as Jax sets a puppy in his lap.

Harry looks over at Zayn, a small smile playing at his lips, the same hope in his face fluttering in Zayn's stomach. “We’ll talk about it later.”

“Okay,” Zayn says quietly, leaning forward to press a gentle kiss to Harry’s lips.

There’s no question he wants to build a home with Harry, settle down, even if it’s not a physical space just yet. A place where maybe they have a bed frame instead of just a mattress and maybe a puppy to come home to, too; A place where neither of them has to be alone—Zayn when he gets lost in his thoughts over the things he can't control or Harry when he gives away little pieces of his heart to his patients and needs help putting it back together. Most of all he wants a place where, no matter what, they have each other.

Harry lifts up the puppy he's holding so he can rub their noses together before setting him down in Zayn’s lap, “Whoops.” He laughs when he presses a kiss to Zayn’s forehead. He knows Zayn will be hard pressed to put a puppy back after he holds him for the first time.

Zayn narrows his eyes at him as another brown one crawls up in Harry’s lap. “Oh, no, this one wants a home too,” he coos down at the new one biting at his pants.

“Babe, here comes another one. Do you think we should just start a zoo?” Zayn laughs as one of the all white ones comes marching over, tripping over her chubby legs.

“We should start a zoo,” Harry says over his laughter, turning towards Zayn with wide eyes.

“Don’t say it,” Zayn says shaking his head as Harry’s mouth drops open slowly, he can see a joke forming before it comes these days.

“The Zaynie Zoo.”

Zayn blinks at him, shakes his head slowly as Jax drops another puppy in Harry’s lap with an excited, “Another one!”

“He loves you,” Harry points down to the blue one licking one of Zayn’s rings with his eyes closed. “He really, really does. We’d have to compete with each other for which one of us loves you more,” Harry says. He’s still grinning even as he tries to be serious. “I’d probably win, though.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so very much for reading! :)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! :)  
> [Tumblr || purpledaizhy](http://www.daisyharry.tumblr.com)


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